


hands

by fadewords



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: A Truly Appalling Amount Of Puns, Ableism, Alternate Universe - Nott Was Always A Goblin, Aromantic Nott (Critical Role), Autistic Nott (Critical Role), Dissociation, Fluff, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, No One In The Mighty Nein Is Neurotypical, Non-Graphic Violence, Nott (Critical Role) Has ADHD, Nott (Critical Role) Has PTSD, Nott (Critical Role) Needs a Hug, Nott-Typical Internalized Racism, Nott/Being Loved And Cared For, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Written Pre-Episode 48, a few chapters have specific cws in end notes, but assume references to child abuse & internalized racism throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-10-15 07:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17524229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: For as long as Nott can remember, she’s had bad hands.





	1. Jester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi) for the beta!!

Nott dozes in the afternoon heat.

Nothing plays out behind her eyes, not yet, just the dark, and spots of red where the sun shines through the window onto her face. It’s...nice. Pretty. And very, very warm. So warm she thinks, vaguely, that she might just take a proper nap here. Not a long one. Just a few winks, a smattering, really, and then she’ll get up and find someone to pester.

But before she can actually drift off, Jester pesters her first.

“Hey, Nott!”

“Mmmmmmm?”

“Do you want to draw with me?”

Nott opens one eye. “...Draw?”

“Yeah, in my sketchbook! I got some cool new inks, so I thought maybe—”

“...Are you sure?” On some loose paper, maybe, Nott might be inclined to say yes. But in Jester’s _sketchbook_ — (She’s only ever let Kiri use her sketchbook. No one else, no one else, ever.)

“Of course I'm sure, _silly_. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. Now come _on_ , let’s _go_ , I want to try them _out_.”

“Okay, okay.” Nott pushes herself up, scrambles over, and flops down on her stomach beside Jester, drumming her hands on the aged wood floor, buzzing with nervous energy. "What do I...?”

“Use this one.” Jester shoves a pen at her.

Nott holds it carefully, as though the slightest bit of pressure might snap it in half, and frowns down at the pages. “...What am I supposed to draw?”

“Whatever you want!” Jester’s already halfway through scribbling a little Kiri with very large eyes.

Nott blinks. Whatever she wants. That’s...pretty broad, as far as categories go. (Or is it narrow? She doesn't have any burning ideas at all, is the thing. But also there are so many possibilities.) Where to even begin—?

“Like you could draw you, or some shiny stuff, or Caleb, or flowers, or some booze—”

Jester keeps listing things (Kiri, Frumpkin, Jester, some crossbow bolts, Beau making a grumpy face, Jester again….), but Nott barely hears her. She’s already drawing.

One of her favorite rings, first. Simple, elegant, with a very shiny stone set in the band. Nott crosses out her first attempt because the ink goes all blotchy and the lines muddle each other, but the second comes out okay, and then she begins working in earnest, a little faster now she's got something of a handle on how this weird fancy pen works.

One of her favorite coins is next, a funny old one that probably should've gone out of circulation years ago according to Caleb, but according to her and anyone with sense is still _perfectly good gold_. Who would throw out gold like that? (Certainly not Nott.)

She draws a slightly wobbly circle first, then little squiggles for ridges, and some sparkle shapes like she’s seen Jester adding a million times to a million other pages. And then the pretty crest. (On her actual coin the impression is so worn she can’t tell what it’s supposed to be, but she likes to pretend it’s a kind of a bird-and-a-blossom, so she scribbles those tiny in the middle.)

Then she pauses, adjusting her grip on the pen, and glances over at the other page. Sees Jester adding a donut crown to the little Kiri's head and grins, imagining the crumbs and glaze dusting her feathers.

Nott turns back to the page and squints at it, then surrounds the ring and the coin with buttons—the little square one with the smooth stone in, the little round pair with the pearls, the cracked one with the shiny edges, the one with the little tree painted on, the one shaped like a feather. The last two come out a bit funny, a bit blotchy, but she leaves them—if she strikes them out, she’ll have to go and cross out the others, too, or else it’s wrong, and she _likes_ those.

A couple of sticks, next. The old gnarled one with the ruby that she took from a very tiny gnome woman (she misses that one). And the really, really big one she had to abandon almost immediately after snagging it from a rather intimidating human man who looked the other way just a little too long (probably for the best, he could’ve almost eaten her whole, he was so big).

Then she sets the pen down and flexes her fingers, once, twice. (They’re getting a little warm in the joints, a little twingey, like she’s spent a bit too long with a lockpick.) Then she picks it up and dives back in.

Jewelry, now, necklaces, bracelets, more rings and things.

Nott spends longer on these, trying to capture the important little details without turning the whole page into a soggy hodge-podge of color. With a little focus, some squinting, and a very essential tongue-poke from between her teeth, she manages. (Or, well. The doodle-shinies seem to’ve come out okay, at least. She’s a little afraid to lift the page, though. Hopes Jester didn’t have anything too important beneath it.)

Nott stops adding ink on top of ink and settles for adding a few more sparkles and shine-lights, a little ways away from the main drawing, and then sets the pen down and scoots back to admire her masterpiece.

Before she can drink it in properly, though, Jester pounces, flomping over and snagging the sketchbook and beginning to scribble with it close to her chest. “No peeking!”

“All right.” Nott grins, resolving to peek anyway the moment Jester looks sufficiently absorbed. (She’ll never know.)

For the time being, though….

Nott pushes herself to a sitting position and massages her knuckles. (The little twinge has returned, and it’s brought buddies.) She makes a face when it has no effect, tries twisting her fingers over each other instead. (It helps, a little, but they’re still complaining—gone all jagged green inside, and loud.)

So she shakes her hand out instead, loose at the wrist, palm facing her chest, up and down up and down, over and over until her fingers blur and start buzzing and don’t stop when she goes still again. She lets them hang in midair, still prickling fuzzy and warm and nice, and then gives it one more go.

When she stops, finally, satisfied, Jester’s looking at her with a slight head-tilt and her mouth forming a small, curious ‘o.’

Nott copies the head-tilt. “What?”

Jester sits up and wiggles her own hands. “That. I've seen you do it before, but not _that_ much. Are you just excited thinking about your shiny things or like does the pen feel bad or are you worried about something or—?”

“Oh,” Nott says, and drops her hands to her lap. “No, nothing like that.”

Though Jester isn’t exactly reading the clues _wrong_ —Nott does _occasionally_ wiggle her hands when she gets too excited (sort of like Caleb, but sideways more than up-down), and _sometimes_ she shakes them out when she touches something gross (though usually she just wipes them on her front and calls it good), and—well. She hasn’t done the last one in years. But still—Jester’s very close with all her other guess—all her other _deductions_. They just aren’t what’s happening _right now_ , is all.

She opens her mouth to say as much, but before she can—

“Well then how come?”

Nott shrugs and tries not to hunch her shoulders. (It feels a little like she’s being interrogated, like maybe there should be a little light swinging above her head and Jester should be holding a tiny little notepad, which is. Which is _weird_. Nott feels like that when she talks to a lot of people, of course, even most people, but talking with _Jester_ hasn’t felt like that in—in—absolutely ages. Not since a little after they first met.) She gestures to the sketchbook as dismissively as she knows how. “Just all the drawing, you know?”

Jester blinks, and for a long moment Nott worries that maybe she _doesn’t_ , in fact, know. That Nott's said something weirder than she thought. Then, “Ohhh, like a hand cramp?”

“Yeah!” A quick, relieved nod.

“Well why didn’t you say so! I can help!”

“Oh.” Nott twists her sleeve. "Well I, I don’t think—”

“Don’t be silly! I'm a _really good healer_ you know. Now give me your hand, I will make it not be all sore and crampy anymore!”

Nott twists her sleeve a little more, then lets go and holds out her hand. “All right.”

It won’t, she supposes, hurt to _try_. It isn’t like Jester is going to need all her spells today, after all. Not midway through the afternoon in a mostly pretty safe town.

Jester scrunches her eyes shut, places one hand on Nott's, and holds her Traveler's symbol, and does her stuff. Then she pulls back, an uncertain smile on her face. “Well?”

“I'm cured!” Nott says, gazing at her still-twinging, still-wonky hands in her very best impression of Caleb staring at a new book. (Except, no, that isn't quite right.) She switches to Jester just after painting a fresh dick. (Closer. Close _enough_ , surely?)

Jester pulls a face. “I _knew_ it didn't work. I'm sorry, Nott. I tried.”

Nott drops the expression and shakes her head, pats Jester’s shoulder. “It's okay, it's not your fault.” She gestures with her hands vaguely. “They're just kind of like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they're just shitty, you know?”

“Shitty how?”

“Shitty like—” She holds them up, in all their wonky glory. “Well, look at them.”

“I'm looking.” A beat. “What am I supposed to be looking at.”

She's kidding her, right. “You're kidding me, right? You're joshing me?”

“No, no, I don't—they have your bandages, is that what you're talking about? Are they.” Jester lowers her voice to half a whisper, though no one else is in the room. “Are they burned or scarred under there or something?”

“No, no, no. They—” Nott grits her teeth and unwraps the bandages just enough to expose the entirety of her fingers, but not the palms of her hands. Then she thrusts them in Jester’s face again without looking. “See?”

“...They are not burned or scarred,” Jester says. Then she gives her a wounded, reproachful look. “I believed you, you know, you didn't have to _prove_ it.”

“That's not—” Nott wrestles with the urge to growl, and something funny twists in her chest. “You really don't see the problem?”

“No…?”

“They.” She frowns deeper. Lowers her hands and glances down at them despite herself. And sure enough, there, like always—the slight bend of her left pinky, the little divot on her left index finger, the clear curve of her middle one away from its neighbor when she tries to press all the fingers of that hand together, the general funny shapes, the sense that these are more individually assembled bits from a mismatched set than a single coherent appendage.

Nott flexes her hands, once, and frowns at the resulting ripple of muscle and bone beneath rough green skin, just a little to the left.

She tears her eyes away, looks back at Jester, holding her hands up and out flat so she can’t possibly miss it this time. “They're crooked, you know?”

Jester nods, but she still— _somehow_ —looks confused. “Crooked?”

“Yeah? They're supposed to be all. Straight and smooth and stuff. They're not supposed to look like _this_.” (In more ways than one—but there's no need to get into all that again, just now.)

“...They're not?”

Nott splutters. “Of course not! Haven't you ever _seen_ a pair of hands before?”

“Well,” Jester says defensively. “I mean of course! I have hands! Lots of people have hands! But yours are kind of different, you know? Like you only have four fingers, so maybe they are also just kind of bendy and weird, I don't know!”

“Other goblins don't have bendy fingers!”

“Well,” Jester says again. “I.”

And in that moment, as chatterbox Jester seems tongue-tied, Nott realizes that probably she hasn't met any other goblins, except maybe the ones they've fought on the road. And probably then she was too busy trying not to be killed to look very hard at their fingers. Which makes sense, because trying not to be killed is always the most important thing when you meet a goblin. So. So probably Nott's are the only ones she's seen up close. So of course, naturally, she might have (must have) just assumed all goblin hands are like Nott's. Which also makes sense, now that she thinks about it. Jester has no reason to assume otherwise, after all.

"Oh,” Nott says. “Um. Um. Nevermind. They just don't, is the point. The crooked stuff is all me.”

Jester nods, but her cheeks still look pretty flushed. Then her brow furrows. “Hang on though. If they're not supposed to be all crooked and stuff, then how come they are? What happened?”

Nott shrugs and begins to rewind the bandages, shoulders going loose with the familiar motions. “They got broke.”

“Oof.” Jester winces. “How?”

“Well,” Nott says, still winding. “Which time?”

-

_Nott crouches in a bush, gripping a large dagger. It’s a bit tricky—her hands are kind of small, and the hilt is pretty big—but she’s managing._

_The harder part is keeping still, when the thin branches are stabbing into her sides and the leaves are so itchy on her face and there are lots of little tiny bugs trying to zoom up her nose._

_But she manages that too, mostly, mindful of the elder the next bush over, and resists the urge to scratch her ears or rub her nose or rock back on her heels. Just crouches, gritting her teeth, and waits. And waits. And waits._

_And then a large hare shuffles its way out of the brush._

_She holds her breath. Starts to straighten up._

_The hare freezes, staring at the bush she’s in. Nott curses under her breath, stands all the way, throws the dagger—_

_Misses. The hare flees._

_There’s a blur of motion and glint of silver and she barely has time to flinch before the elder’s reached over and grabbed her wrists and—the flat of his blade slams down on her fingers._

_“Next time,” he says. “You wait for my signal.”_

_-_

_Nott wipes her muddy hands on her shirt and kneels in front of the pile of meat she’s meant to be sorting, fresh from rotting, lean from fat. She reaches for a scrawny-looking vole (it should go in the lean pile, probably, to feed the babes)—_

_An elder smacks her (still-healing) hand away. “You wanna make everyone sick? Clean off first.”_

_Nott wipes her hands (one stinging, one not) on her shirt again and then tries a second time._

_Another smack, sharper than before, doesn’t re-crack anything but_ hurts _. “With water!”_

_-_

_Nott is working with another elder. She’s new on the job, just transferred, not quite sure what she’s meant to do, and doesn’t want to fuck it up, so she’s asking questions._

_The elder keeps answering them, so she keeps asking, and pointing. What does this do, what is this for, should I get that for you, is it all right if I move this, how does that work, do you mind if touch that, what would happen if I—_

_She grabs Nott by the arm and yanks her fingers back. “Shut up.”_

_-_

_Nott's trailing the back of her hand along the healer’s shelves. There’s lots and lots of jars on them, with funny-colored contents, all polished and gleaming and smooth._

_The healer swats her, and her knuckles smack hard against the glass._

_-_

_Nott's fretting in the dark, shaking her hands back-forth, back-forth, back-forth, rapidfire. She’s messed up. She’s messed up. She’s messed up. They’re going to be so angry. She’s messed up. They’re going to be so— She’s—_

_“Quit that.” An elder grabs her by the wrist and digs her claws in and yanks her forward and raps Nott's hands with her stick. “Now—”_

_-_

_Nott's paused in the middle of a job, massaging her knuckles._

_A quick swat. Not even very hard at all, but the elder’s still holding the bone burnisher, and it strikes her first two fingers and she makes a strangled noise._

_He seems surprised, but says only, “Back to work.”_

_-_

_Nott's helping construct a little shelter. She passes an elder a tool. It’s the wrong one. They sigh and whack her with it, then point out the right one._

_-_

_Nott's said something stupid. She cringes before the blow comes, and gets an extra one for it._

_-_

_Nott's done nothing, she’s just there, and the elder’s mad, and then—_

-

_Nott's—_

-

Nott fiddles with the end of the bandages.

Jester’s looking at her kind of funny. Nott sort of wishes she'd stop, cause it makes her skin crawl, and anyway _Caleb_ didn’t look at her this funny, when she told _him_ —and she told him a _lot_ more than she’s just told Jester, too. (Jester has a bullet point list, highlights, the exact words of which are already slipping away like smoke, buzzing kind of funny on Nott's tongue; Caleb has more, has details, stories, names, though he did not ask for them. She hopes Jester won’t, either.)

Jester doesn’t. Just looks at her with funny eyes and a funny turn to one side of her mouth and her hands very still on the pen in her lap, and says, “Oh _Nott._ ”

Nott shrugs and looks away. “It was a long time ago. And—” She wiggles her fingers. “And they’re a lot better now, anyway! Used to be I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t hold little stuff so good? But now I can—I can write, and I can do magic, and pick _all kinds of lock_ s, and—and _steal things_ super good, so! It doesn’t matter really.”

The funny turn becomes a little smile, but Jester’s eyes are still all creased and wrong. “I'm glad they are better, that is good. And it is true, you are definitely the _best_ thief, probably in the whole world even. But I don’t think—” She breaks off, and fiddles with the pen. “It still sounds pretty bad?”

Nott shrugs a single shoulder. “I mean it wasn’t fun? But, hey—could’ve been worse! You know, my hands coulda broke _every_ time! Mostly they just stung a bit.” Or bruised. Or swelled. Or sometimes got kinda weird and crunchy. (Which now that she thinks about it maybe was just another kind of broke? But she could still _use_ them those times, and they weren’t _really_ broke unless she couldn’t use them.) “Or they coulda hit me in the face, or stabbed me or something, you know?”

“Well, that is true, and I am very very glad they didn’t do those things, because then you might be dead—and I would still be your friend if you were a ghost of course, but I kind of really like you better alive?”

“I like you better alive too,” Nott says, and doesn’t add that she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have decided to travel with ghost-Jester. (It isn’t personal, it’s just that undead things are scary, and new people are scary, and _undead new people_ is a whole new level of terrifying—and she isn’t called “Nott the Brave” for nothing.)

“Yeah! But.” Jester chews her lip. “Even if you are alive, and, and better now, and it could’ve been worse and was a long time ago, it still kind of matters I think? Because—because they hurt you, and family is not supposed to do that. They’re supposed to take care of you and teach you and stuff, you know?”

“Sure,” Nott says, because she does know. She’s seen families around, and heard stories and things, and there's Luke and Yeza and Caleb besides. And she isn’t stupid. She understands how it all works very well, thank you. But goblins don’t _have_ families like that, is the thing, with moms and dads and parents and kids and all. Goblins have _clans_ , and clans are different. (She’s explained this before, she’s pretty sure, but it seems like Jester’s forgotten.)

Jester nods very quick, and continues, “Like—like my momma didn’t do anything like that, ever. She never hit me, you know? Because parents aren’t _supposed_ to.”

“I know,” Nott says. “And that’s good, and I'm glad your mom is nice! But,” she says, half-apologetic (because she doesn’t want Jester to think she’s calling her stupid), half-matter-of-fact (because it is very obvious), “You know. Your mom’s not a goblin.”

“No, but—”

“And I didn’t have parents, anyway, I had a _clan_.” Have a clan. Had. Have. (It’s confusing, sometimes.)

“Isn’t that kind of just having a _whole bunch of parents_ , though?”

Nott laughs. “No! Not at all.”

“But you said all the grownups look after all the little kids and—”

“Yes, but there’s no _family_ stuff. Just making sure kids don’t die and naming and teaching and that’s it. Mostly teaching, it’s really important. And—” Nott shrugs. “—I was just really bad at being taught.”

Jester makes a little noise in the back of her throat and twists at the pen. “You—”

“No, no.” Nott shakes her head. “It’s okay, it’s true. You know, most goblins, they mess up, they get a swat, they learn and don’t mess up again. I just...never learned. So, totally unteachable, me.” She pauses, indicates her hands. “But they kept trying.”

And really, they didn’t have to. They could have just abandoned her, or thrown her out, or even killed her. But they didn’t. (Nott hates her clan, she hates them, she does, but she has to give them credit for that. They kept trying, and that’s not nothing.)

Jester’s face has gone funny again. “Hitting is not part of teaching.”

“Not for regular folk, but for goblins it is. You know, I keep telling you, everything you’ve heard is true—they’re violent and cruel and angry, it’s just in their natures. You know, they’re—they’re just beasts.”

“Well,” Jester says. “Maybe. But even if that’s true—”

“It is.”

“Even _if_ that’s true,” she continues. “It still wasn’t _okay_. And it definitely definitely was _not_ your fault, and you did _not_ deserve it even a little bit, even if you were the worst student in the whole entire world, and you are _not_.”

 _I kind of was_ , Nott wants to say, and _yes, I_ am _Nott,_ and _I know_ , but her throat goes sort of narrow and prickly so she just shrug-nods and picks at her sleeves instead.

Jester makes the little noise again. “No-ott. I kind of really want to hug you right now, is that okay?”

Nott swallows and nods, because a hug does sound kind of okay and Jester looks like she can probably use one (her face is all creased again and her tail’s gone droopy and she’s just too _still_ —Jesters aren’t supposed to be still).

In no time at all Nott’s pulled up onto Jester’s knees and half-squished in her arms. Nott hesitates for a beat, then leans in, slipping her own arms as far round Jester as they’ll go and pressing her face to her shoulder.

She closes her eyes for a long, long moment.

Then pulls back, stumbles off of Jester’s knees, looks up at her—and finds that her face is a bit blurry. And so is everything around it.

 _Oh_ , Nott thinks, and _Fuck_.

She stares at the floor, blinking like hell. When she can see right again and her eyes sting less, she looks back up, scrounging up an awkward smile.

Jester returns it, so bright and wide her eyes almost crinkle shut.

“Um,” Nott says, and fumbles for a joke. Comes up empty, and is forced instead to blurt, “You’re really warm.”

Jester grins. “Well I _am_ a tiefling you know. We’re _always_ warm. It’s why we’re so good at hugs!”

Nott grins too, a nervous sort of thing. “Well, I, I don’t know about _all_ of you, but. You’re pretty good.”

“It is _definitely_ all of us,” Jester says. “But I _am_ the best, yes. You are welcome.”

“Yeah thanks,” Nott says, with a twitchy half-grin, because now it can be kind of a joke, even though she means it.

“Of course! I'm your friend, Nott, I am always here for hugs!” Jester beams. “And thank you, you know, for trusting me and stuff.”

Well. There goes the joke. But maybe Nott can still salvage things, brush it off.

“I mean, it wasn’t really a secret? I thought you already knew,” she says, because it’s true.

“Yeah but _still_. You _could_ have lied once you found out I didn’t, you know? Because you are very good at hiding things and sneaking and stuff, so—ohhhh that reminds me! I appreciate your trust very very much but that reminds me!”

“What?” Anything to stop talking about this, Nott is sort of—sort of tapped, on that front. (Any more Jestering and she might just run out and steal half the street. And then she’ll have to run from any angry mob, and she’ll have _another_ town to avoid.)

“I almost for _got_!” Jester wriggles and lunges to the side and picks up her sketchbook and holds it out. “Look!”

Nott looks.

There’s the Kiri with the donut crown, and also Beau making a face, and Jester herself dancing in the street with bread. And on the other page, Nott's pile of treasure. (It’s all a bit blurrier than she remembers, each scribble bleeding into the next, but still recognizably her stuff.) And on top of the little pile, in Jester’s thinner-lined style—a small, shiny-eyed Nott, grinning wide with her hands raised above her head in obvious celebration.

“It’s _you_!” Jester bursts out, pointing.

“It’s _me_!” Nott pokes her little doodle-self. “It’s _perfect_!”

Jester beams, wiggling a little again, and Nott kind of wants to hug her again on the spot.

So she does, and is hugged back instantly.

After, Jester talks about her favorite bits of Nott's drawing, and about the rest of her own doodles on the other page, and Nott sits back, leaning with her hands pressed to the floor, and just listens.

(Her wrists complain, after a while, but she doesn’t care, just shifts onto her front and rests her chin on her arms, still listening.)

(It’s Jester, after all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws: scenes feat. child abuse (all in italics) & violent ableism (fifth paragraph in italics)
> 
> y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)


	2. Molly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vloud thanks to [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi) for the beta!!

Nott sits back against the wall, one leg bent, the other flat on the floor, and turns a button over and over in one hand. It’s silvery, square, with a bit of gold thread still strung through the little loop on the back, and it’s very, very good. (Her favorite, at the moment.)

She tumbles it faster, in increasingly complex patterns, to keep from sliding up off the floor and over to Molly, in the middle of the room.

More specifically, to keep from sliding over to one or more of the dozen little jars of nail polish surrounding him—the deep glittering blue one by his left knee, the warm sunshine yellow by his hip on the other side, the pine-green at his right knee, the shimmery silver beside it, the shining red he’s holding lax in one hand, the—

Nott pulls another button out of one of her pockets and begins to turn it—fumbling a little—in her other hand.

She isn’t going to get up. She isn’t going to head over. She isn’t going to reach down, casual, and snag a jar. She isn’t going to slip one in her pocket. She isn’t going to slip two in her pocket. Or three. Or four, or all of them. She isn’t going to slip _any_ of them in her pockets. Not one. (No matter how easy it would be, how simple, how _nice_.)

She isn’t going to move.

She’s going to stay right here, and enjoy her buttons, and wait for Caleb to get back. Maybe he’ll take her through the market again later, play polite and confused long enough for her to slip something _else_ bright and sparkly into her cloak. (Maybe.)

Or maybe Jester will want to go out again, when she gets back, or. Something. (Something.)

Nott can decide later. For now she just has to wait. Wait and not move. (And not move, and not move, and not move.)

It’s—hard. She really wants to get up and pace, is what she wants to do, but if she does that then she’ll inevitably walk over to that little sunshine jar and.

Well.

She wants it, is the thing. It’s _very_ pretty, and she’s _very_ crafty, and _very_ good at stealing things out from under people’s noses—

But this is Molly. The jar is Molly’s. And Nott hasn’t forgotten that Charm spell.

(Nott is never going to forget that Charm spell.)

So she keeps her distance, and keeps still, and berates herself for not going with Caleb and the others. (So what if the man at the bar scowled at her ears, or if the woman down the street flinched at her smile, or if that one Crownsguard squinted a little too long at her eyes? So what. That’s what disguise spells are for. That’s what the _others_ are for.)

But what’s done is done, she supposes. She just has to sit, for now, and admire her buttons, and maybe drink a little.

So she does. Sets her buttons down in her lap, pulls out her flask, takes a long drink. Wipes her mouth, and watches Molly, and admires the shine of the jars in the afternoon sun, and scowls a little at the slick, shining red polish he’s _somehow_ not getting all over his fingers, the bastard.

“You want in on this?”

Nott nearly drops her flask, and does upset her buttons. Sets the drink aside and scrambles to retrieve them, the little silver square and gem-encrusted circle. “Um,” she says, as she tucks them back in her pockets.

Molly gestures to the jars with a smile she doesn’t trust an inch. “There’s more than enough to go round, if you’d like to paint your own.”

“I.” She’s...tempted. Really, really tempted.

But she shouldn’t be, because this is Molly—as barbed as he is silver-tongued. (Molly, who Charmed her. Molly, who smacked Caleb.)

And, and anyway, this kind of thing isn’t—it just isn’t. It isn’t for Nott, is the thing. This kind of, of, eye-catching beauty routine. Because Nott doesn’t want to catch any eyes. Nott is actively trying _not_ to catch any eyes, always, at all times. That’s the whole point of absolutely every non-illusory fashion choice she’s ever made.

(And—and even that aside, it’s not as though it would look good on her, anyway. Not with her sickly green skin, and gnarled, crooked hands, and, and goblin’s claws.)

(And she’s never so much as _held_ a jar of nail polish before, besides—her clan members never invited her to join, when they had some, and she knew better than to ask—much less tried to put some on. So, so imagine the _mess_ —all over her fingers, and her clothes, and the _floor_ —and Molly’s face, watching it all, and—)

(No. No. All things considered, it really is for the best she doesn’t try. So—)

“I'm fine, thanks.”

“Well,” Molly says easily. “Suit yourself. But do me a favor?”

She braces herself for the snide _stop staring_ , but it never comes.

“Which color, do you think, for my other ones?” He holds up the silver jar and a rich purple, and she sees that every other finger on both hands has been left plain. He’s...alternating? He doesn’t want them all to match?

...Of course he doesn’t. He’s Molly.

“Uh,” she says. “I don’t know. Maybe...that one?” She points at the purple, uncertain. It looks nice with the red, but maybe it’s too close a color, maybe it’s not _out there_ enough for him, he does seem to prefer dressing like—like a firework exploded in a field of wildflowers and then had babies with an old quilt. (It’s an interesting choice, and Nott can appreciate it for its brightness and all the shiny trim—but she isn’t sure she’s the best person to be offering him fashion advice, all the same. Their preferences are too opposite.)

But he nods, and smiles, and says, “Nice choice.” And he starts applying the purple.

Nott blinks. And then watches.

Molly is brash in many things, but not in this. In this, he’s delicate. He paints with gentle, even strokes, like Jester drawing at her most contemplative, or Caleb in the midst of copying over spells. Somewhere between them, maybe. Careful, yes, and absorbed, sure—but there’s a kind of ease, a light sureness, or maybe satisfaction, that isn’t—really quite there, in those other two.

The more Nott watches, the more she thinks, maybe—it’s still like Caleb and Jester, yes, there’s similarity and it won’t be denied—but maybe it’s a little bit more, actually, kind of—a little bit more like herself.

Like herself, picking a lock without time pressure. Picking a lock just because.

Or at least. That’s what it reminds her of, kind of, as she watches. The look on his face, the measured movements, the flawless results.

Nott kind of wishes...something. She doesn’t know what, except that it’s stupid, so she pushes the weird longing away and pulls out two completely different buttons (an ivory and a funny marbled one), and traces their edges.

Eventually, her eyes slide away from Molly and back to the little bottles of polish, and to the door, and to Molly again, and to the polish, and to the buttons in her own gnarled hands, and the polish, and the polish, and the—

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want in on this?” Molly tilts his head to the side. “Only you seem...interested.”

That, Nott gathers, is a very polite way of saying she won’t quit staring and her eyes are the size of saucers.

“They’re just pretty.”

“Of course they are, I have excellent taste.” An arrogant grin. “And so do you, apparently. So why not give it a go?”

Nott shrugs. “I'd only mess it up.”

“Ah, it’s not that difficult. I could show you how.”

“I'd still mess it up.”

“Nonsense, I'm a _very_ good teacher. But,” he adds generously, “if you’re really that worried, I could do them for you?”

Nott hesitates. Doesn’t think about fingers on hers, or Charm spells, or sudden slaps. _Does_ think about sunshine bottles and sparkling silver and vibrant, wine-dark red. “I. I don’t know. It’s all a bit...bright.”

For a moment Molly looks puzzled (at least, Nott thinks puzzled, is pretty sure puzzled, but it’s hard to tell with those solid-red eyes). Then, “Ah. Well—” He searches through his little collection, plucks out the pine-green bottle, holds it up. “What about this? Something a little more subtle.”

Nott gnaws on her lip. On Molly, the green would be _anything_ but subtle. But on Nott....

Well. It’s nearly the same color as her claws already. Very nearly. So nearly it might not be noticed. And the shimmer is very faint, but Nott imagines if she holds it up to the light….

“...Okay.”

Molly grins. “Excellent! So—”

“But if you tell anyone I'll kill you!”

He grins wider. “Oh, of course.”

“I mean it!” She puts a hand on her shortsword beneath her cloak.

“Wouldn't expect anything less.” He places a hand over his heart, infuriatingly unruffled. “I promise I won't tell a soul.”

Nott squints. “...What’s the catch.”

“No catch. You did me a favor already, remember?” He wiggles his fingers.

Nott squints so hard Molly’s just a purple blur. He _seems_ sincere. And she _did_ do him a favor already, it’s true. And she _can_ just kill him if he spills the beans. (She won’t, of course. But he doesn’t have to know that.) “...Good.”

“Wonderful!” He clasps his hands together. “So, how are we doing this, am I talking you through, or am I doing it for you, or—”

“Gimme.”

“All right.” He tosses the bottle over.

She catches it easily. Tries to open it, fumbles with the cap for about five seconds before raising it to her mouth, to grip it in her teeth and twist—

Molly clears his throat.

Nott drops the bottle, shoulders hunching. “Sorry!”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s fine. Just...open it like a normal person, please. No teeth.”

Nott stiffens. Picks up the bottle again, struggles with the cap for a long, infuriating moment—and then it twists right open, easy as anything. She sets it down, hands shaking (because she’s _pissed_ and not at _all_ because Molly is watching, and fuck you for even suggesting it), and then hesitates.

Does she really want to do this? _Really_? And in front of Molly, of all people? (Caleb, sure, maybe, or Jester—or maybe even Beau, or hell, Yasha—but _Molly_? Molly is—he’s—Nott's grown to like him more over time, sure, but that doesn't mean she thinks he’s _nice_.)

...Fuck it, she decides. She wants to do it, she’s gonna do it. (And if she doesn’t like it—well. Molly might be kind of an ass, but he’s right. She _can_ just wipe it off.)

So she turns away from him a little, ducks her head, lifts the little brush, and sets to work. The polish slides on smooth and thinner than she expects, and it’s very quickly all over the ends of her fingers, but she doesn’t let herself stop until they’re all done.

At that point, her left hand’s a bit twingey—she doesn’t use it quite as much, it takes less to tire it out—but she doesn’t shake it out or even twist at it. She doesn’t want to spray polish everywhere. (And she can feel Molly’s eyes on her.) So she just puts the cap back on the bottle and stares at her hands.

Which. They’re still her hands. Still wonky and green and awfully crooked. Just...two different greens, now. (She doesn’t know what else she was expecting.)

“Okay,” Molly says. “Let’s see.”

She’s tempted to refuse—but he’ll probably just snatch her hands and look anyway, so she doesn’t bother, just holds them out.

“Oof. Okay. Let me get the remover and we’ll clean these up.”

There is no _we_. The second he pulls the remover out and pours it on the little puff ball thing, Nott snatches it and starts cleaning off her fingers. (She’ll clean off her actual claws last. She’s got this far, might as well see what they look like done right.)

“Funny,” Molly says. “You’re so good with your hands, all the lockpicking and stuff, you’d think you’d be better at this.”

Nott wants to scoff at the backhanded compliment, a little (the _asshole_ ), and she wants to preen, a little (she _is_ a skilled thief), but mostly she wants to scowl and walk away. Settles for none of the above, in the end, and scrubs around her left index finger instead. “Yeah, well,” she says, eyes fixed on it. “That’s different.”

“Not really. It’s all dexterity.”

“That’s not the _only_ factor.”

“Oh?” Molly sounds amused. “And what else is there?”

Nott wipes carefully at a stubborn bit of polish on her thumb. “Practice.”

-

_Nott sticks the hairpin in the lock. Carefully, quietly, feeling for—for. The things, the little mechanisms inside the lock that keep it locked. (The word escapes her.)_

_She finds one, she thinks. The others—impossible. The hairpin keeps slipping in her grip and the mechanisms won’t stick and she’s getting a hand cramp and someone’s coming and—_

_She jams the pin in her pocket and scurries off, scowling._

_-_

_Nott sticks the hairpin in the lock. Feels for the tumblers. There’s one, after an age. Another, after an eternity. Another. Another._

_The tiny padlock pings open._

_Nott grins, all spines, and hooks it over her finger, lets it swing back and forth. (Lets the weight of it soothe her joints, lets the back-forth warm them loose again.)_

_Removes it, snaps it shut, and starts all over again._

_-_

_Nott sets to work, slow, careful, keeping an ear out._

_The pin sticks. She jiggles it, wrestles with it, heart pounding, fingers straining—it won’t budge._

_She curses—leaves it there, flees._

_-_

_Nott sets to work, slow, careful, keeping an ear out._

_Is rewarded, eventually, with a click. Opens the box. Reaches inside and pulls out goodies with stiff, aching fingers._

_-_

_Nott scowls at the door, heart beating rapidly, and rushes through jimmying the lock. It’s simple, it’s easy, and she’d love to take her time with it, enjoy the process and the gentle, satisfying clicks—but there’s footsteps heading round the corner so quick it is, quick as she can—_

_Not quick enough. Footsteps heading round the corner, up behind her as she crouches, frozen, tools still in the half-open lock, hands still gripping the tools far too tight._

_Thick, hairy fingers close round her wrist and squeeze._

_-_

_Nott rushes. The pick breaks off in the lock._

_-_

_Nott rushes. Her hands shake. She drops her tools. The noise alerts the owner of the lovely establishment, and she beats a hasty retreat._

_-_

_Nott rushes. The lock opens, but her fingertips pulse for three minutes solid, after._

_-_

_Nott knows the motions like breathing, and several minutes later the lock pings open. She slips through the door and out and shakes out her wrists on the way. (Fucking ow—but worth it, so worth it, staying to be caught would have been so much worse.)_

_-_

_Nott knows the motions like breathing, but it’s not enough. She woke up with a dull ache just beneath the skin on the back of her hands, and it’s growing louder the longer she works at this fucking lock, and it’s making her stupidly clumsy. Stupidly, stupidly clumsy, and it’s fucking everything up, she’s fucking everything up, and what did she expect, what did she_ expect _, honestly, when—_

_The prickling on the back of her neck gets too much for her cornered-mouse heart._

_She shoves her tools in her pocket, mouth dry, and jams trembling fingers in after them, and leaves._

_What’s she need in this stupid shop for anyway. Everything’s probably stale. Better off heading back to that farmhouse, snagging something hot and fresh from the kitchen. Number of fancy shoes by the door, they probably won’t miss it. And if they do, well. The little tiny ones say they’ve got a kid, so they shouldn’t suspect a goblin’s the one sneaking off with their bacon. (You hear hoofbeats, you think horses, not centaurs, and all that.)_

_-_

_Nott knows the motions like breathing, and the lock pings open almost without effort, and she grabs the goodies and re-locks the drawer and slinks away._

_Hours later, she presses her thumb to the knuckles of her opposite hand, hard, and wonders why they hurt._

-

“Ah,” Molly says. “That’s fair.”

“Of course it is.” Nott scrubs at her second and third fingers in rapid succession. “Not,” she adds, “that I needed a _lot_ of practice, mind.” Which is true, really. She didn’t. Learning to _open_ locks was easy. Doing it under time-pressure and without it hurting like hell—that was the kicker. (But Molly doesn’t need to know that.)

“Naturally, naturally. I bet you were jimmying doors before you left the cradle.”

“It’s true!” Nott switches hands and doesn’t bother explaining that goblins don’t have cradles. “I was _born_ with hair pins in my tiny, tiny fists.”

“Must’ve been hell on your mother.”

Nott shrugs rather than explain that goblins don’t have mothers, either. A moment later, it occurs to her it doesn’t really matter anyway—mothers or not, _someone_ birthed her, and the pins probably _wouldn’t_ have been very pleasant for them, no.

She finishes cleaning off her fingers and sets the little puffball—now stained green—on her lap. She still needs to clean her claws, but a few moments, first, to give her hands a rest….

While she waits, she looks at all the little bottles of polish, still lying out around Molly, to keep from looking at her claws. (They might be cleaned up now, but they still look silly, she’s sure, and she doesn’t want confirmation.) She still kind of wants to steal one, but less, now. Less.

“You about finished?”

She glances up involuntarily, and finds Molly staring at her, expression inscrutable. (Really, those eyes are cheating.) She shakes her head. “I'm gonna take the rest off in a minute.”

“Well, all right,” Molly says. “But before you do, d’you mind if I try something?”

“What is it.”

He holds up the sunshine bottle. “There's this new technique I've been wanting to try. Just little dots, kind of like stars.”

“Stars?” She looks from the bottle to his face, intrigued and dubious in equal measure. (Surely the brush is too big to make pinpricks that small?)

“Yeah! I saw someone with ‘em on the street the other day and I've been itching to give it a go. But I don't want to ruin the, if I may say, rather _fabulous_ job I've done on mine, and here you are about to take yours off _anyway_ , soo….”

Nott blinks. “You want me to be your guinea pig?”

“Guilty as charged!” he says cheerfully. “What d’you say?”

Nott considers. She doesn't much want him touching her, exactly, and she doesn't trust him an inch—but she _is_ taking the polish off anyway, and maybe if she does this for him he'll be more likely to keep quiet about it all. And if he _doesn't_ she can just claim it was all guinea pig work anyway, he convinced her, she thought it was dumb all along.

“...All right. Fine. Star me up!”

“That's the spirit.” Molly beckons her over.

She goes and plops herself a reasonable distance from him. He scoots closer, opens the bottle with obnoxious ease, pulls a much tinier brush out of the basket, and reaches for her hand.

She pulls it to her lap lightning-fast. “Hey!”

“I—”

Her brain catches up with her mouth—stupid, he needs to keep her fingers steady, is all—but too late now, she’s already been weird, impossible to play it off without seeming suspicious. The only solution is to dig deeper, really commit, just go full-on absurd. “What’s the big idea? Are—are you _making a move on me_?”

Molly laughs. “No, no. God, no. You’re very pretty, Nott, but—never.”

She brushes off the sting—she knows she’s not a looker, but he doesn’t have to sound _so_ amused and he doesn’t have to _lie_ —and says, “Well. Good! Because I'm, I'm not interested.”

“Of course not.” Still too amused, the condescending fucker. “Now, your hands?”

She squints a moment, considering—then shifts so she’s sitting with her knees up and then pats them twice, pointedly, before placing her hands down flat on them. Then she forces herself to look down from his face and watch while he reaches for one. (If she’s watching, she won’t get all stupid again, and as an added bonus she won’t have to see him roll his eyes at her.)

As she does, her eyes slip from his hand to hers, and it’s—actually not so bad, now it’s been cleaned off? Her claws are shiny, and—she can’t see the dirt, or the chipped places, which is...different. And the color against her skin is—almost kind of nice.

(On anyone else—any other goblin, at least—it might be called almost pretty. But it’s not anyone else, it’s just Nott. And she doesn’t want to be pretty _for a goblin_. She just—)

She chews her lip a little. It’s _almost_ nice. It’s—mostly it’s just _different_. (Which is—well. She won’t go so far as to say it’s _something_ , but it’s...not exactly nothing either? And she doesn’t know what to do with that.)

“Ah, now _this_ isn’t half-bad!” Molly inspects each of her claws in turn, poking at them without really touching them. “Looks really nice, actually.”

“Of course it does. I'm an _expert_.” (She _does_ occasionally have cause to scrub her hands— _actually scrub_ , not just rinse like Caleb does his.)

“Thought you said you needed practice?”

“It’s, it’s different skillsets.”

“I see. Well, in any case, nice job! Now hold still while I make it even nicer.”

“Holding!”

Molly grins and dips the tiny, tiny brush in the bottle and begins, as measured and graceful as before. Slowly, one by one, little yellow pinpricks appear.

“You know,” he says, as he goes. “This is going a lot better than the first time _I_ painted my nails.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Toya had some, asked if I wanted to try. I'd never seen it before, but I thought—hell, that looks like fun. So I let her do one of my hands, tried the other myself. And boy, the difference between them.” He half-laughs. “You wouldn’t believe. Think I was worse than you. Bright pink all over my fingers, the floor, my clothes…. It was a right mess.”

Nott feigns shock. “You? A mess?”

“Shut up, you. Yes. Gods but it was worth it, though.” He pauses, gestures a little with the brush. “I mean, I looked _amazing_ , for one thing.”

“Of course.”

“And for another….” He goes back to painting. “I dunno. Just—it was early days, for me. I'd had a bit of time to, you know, explore myself—”

Nott makes a disgusted noise.

“Not like that, get your mind out of the gutter! Although, I mean—”

Nott makes the noise again, louder.

“Anyway! I was _saying_ I'd had a bit of a once-over, you know, the hair, the scars, the—” He angles his head down a little awkwardly, indicating the red eye in the peacock feather. “And I hated the lot. But the polish—” He smiles, a softer thing than his usual. “It was nice. Something….”

“Something new,” Nott says, mouth dry. “Different.”

“I was going to say _mine_ , but yeah, that works. It was like that with the tattoos, too, but in a—well, sort of a different way.”

“Bigger?”

He shakes his head. Then pauses. Nods. “Yeah, kinda. Bigger change, bigger _fuck-you_. Or, _supposed_ to be, anyway.” He makes a face. “Still—yeah. Bigger. More permanent and all.”

Nott nods. Doesn’t think about piercings, or doll’s masks, or bandages, or promises. Doesn’t think about pine-green claws. Doesn’t. Just sits, mouth dry as dust, listening.

“But, you know. Sitting there with Toya, pink glitter on my hands—” He shrugs, sets to work on her other hand. “Sometimes it’s the little things. Know what I mean?”

Nott thinks, bizarrely, of hairpins and little bits of copper wire. “...Yeah.”

“Yeah.” A few beats of silence, and two more flecks of gold settling soft amid the green. Then, “Good thing I've improved since then, though. Hate to see what your hands would’ve looked like if I'd done this two years back.”

“A sea of yellow,” Nott says. “Or if they mixed—”

“A really nice green!”

“I was going to say—”

“Something less flattering, I'm sure, but I know my colors. Trust me, it’d come out nice.”

“Mmmm, I'll believe it when Jester says it.”

“Are you _implying_ she knows color theory better than—” He breaks off, mock outrage falling away. “Well. That’s fair, actually. But still, I know enough!” And he devolves into an explanation she doesn’t really listen to, for who knows how long, before— “Okay, there. That’s you done.”

She starts, and begins to scoot away, but—

“Hang on, let me see first, up close. Both hands together now.”

She groans, but stays put, holds them out side-by-side, stares at the floor.

“There we are.” His hands ghost beneath hers. “What d’you think?”

“It’s okay,” she says automatically.

“You haven’t even looked!”

Reluctantly, she looks. Pauses, tilting her hands this way and that, watching the tiny gold flecks—which do, in fact, look kind of like stars, except they’re strewn light across a green background and not a blue-black one—catch the dying afternoon light. “...It’s okay,” she says again, still staring.

“Okay?” Molly scoffs. “That’s a masterpiece, that is. Look at it, looks _amazing_.”

“Sure.”

“It does! And the colors really suit you. Especially the yellow—brings out your eyes.”

Nott frowns. Bragging is one thing, but now he’s just making fun of her. She doesn’t—that’s. There’s a reason she didn’t want to do this around Molly.

“Very pretty. Very you,” he adds, and for a second he almost sounds like he _means_ it, and Nott's either going to laugh or snap and neither of those are ideal at the moment, given he’s still half-holding her _hands_ , so—

“I knew it,” she says. “You _were_ making a move on me before!”

Molly raises his eyebrows, obviously startled, and laughs. Drops her hands. “I really wasn’t.”

She digs the hole deeper. (This—this is familiar territory. This is an easy joke, an effortless distraction, simple as anything.) “You were! Admit it! You think—you think I'm dreamy. And _foxy_.”

He laughs again. “Well, I won’t deny you’re gorgeous, but you’ve made it clear several times you’re not looking for anything, and you—and by all means correct me if I'm wrong!—but you also seem pretty uninterested just in general.”

She nods so fast her head feels like it might fall off. “Very.” (She’s only been unsure of it once.)

“Very. So there we are. No moves here.”

“Well,” she says. “Good.”

“Good. Now that we’ve established I _don’t_ want a summer wedding—or in your pants, for the record—and all compliments are _strictly platonic_ , I'll just say again it looks nice, and let you get on with…” He waves a hand. “Whatever. And hey, thanks for playing guinea pig for me.”

“Sure,” Nott says. “Anytime.”

He grins. “Careful. I might hold you to that.”

She makes a face, snags the remover and a couple more puffballs, and shuffles off back to her corner.

Stares at her claws.

It’s...weird. The polish catches the light so nice, it’s like wearing a ring without wearing a ring—but she can’t just leave it on, it catches the light too _obviously_ , and people will _see_ , and anyway it’s only _almost_ pretty and she doesn’t—she can’t leave it.

So she wipes it all off, quick and messy, one-two-three across her fingers on each hand—and then she pauses with the puffball hovering over her right thumb.

And she stops.

And lowers it. And tucks it in her pocket. And tucks her slightly-tacky thumbs in her fists.

Stays like that, until the others get back, at which point she jams her hands in her pockets and doesn’t look at them and really really really doesn’t look at Molly.

But he doesn’t say anything, and they don’t ask why her hands are in her pockets, and even when she takes them out after a while and gestures no one seems to notice, no one seems to know, not even Molly (he’s not shooting her any smug looks from across the room, so he can’t know, must think she took all of it off, every last bit).

But she knows. She knows, and it’s kind of—it’s almost nice. (Maybe even a good almost.)

She’ll take it off later that night, she decides. Later. When everyone’s asleep.

(She doesn’t.)

(Four mornings later, in the marketplace, the gold-flecked green is still there on her thumbs as she slips a little bottle of glittery, hot-pink nail polish into her pouch and scurries away.)

(It’s still there as she slips it into Molly’s bag that night.)

(And it’s still there, though a little chipped, two mornings later, when Molly emerges from his room with sparkling pink nails.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nott may be married but u will pry the grayquoiro hc out of my cold dead ha nd s
> 
> y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)


	3. Beau

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again to [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi) for the beta!

The grass crunches underfoot.

Nott trails a half-step behind Caleb, focusing on the little sound and the satisfying give beneath her feet, and ignoring how the frost stings the bits of skin her bandages don’t cover. (She should, she knows, probably at some point consider buying shoes. But she won’t. Shoes are just—so _weird_. All cramped and sweaty and _awful_.)

(Socks, though. Nott can get behind some socks. Bright colors, bright patterns, soft fabrics—maybe someday, after Caleb does his thing, when she doesn’t have to worry about drawing attention to herself…maybe. Until then, though, she’ll just stick with bandages and freezing toes.)

(Probably just as well. Socks without shoes would only get soggy on a day like this.)

A fresh gust of wind sends her hair lashing round her face, stinging and sharp and getting all in her _mouth_. Nott scowls, spits it out, tucks her hair way down in her cloak, and tugs her hood further down over her face for good measure. The wind bites at her fingers through their wrappings as she does, so she shoves them deep in her pockets.

Deeper. Curls them into fists, rubs her thumbs over her other fingers, seeking warmth.

But there’s none. Only cool fabric and the wind rushing hollow through the ragged seams, chapping her skin and sinking through to her bones.

So she pulls her hands back out, holds them in front of her chest, and tries to wring the cold away. Slides a thumb hard across her knuckles, and then down to the next set of finger joints, and the next, and then switches hands, and then rubs her palms, and then just grabs her fingers and twists them every which way.

She cracks her knuckles several times in the process, but her fingers are no warmer, and the dull, distant ache remains.

So she cups her hands in front of her mouth and breathes on them instead. Her hot, muggy breath helps, a little, for a few seconds, but every time it fades the ache settles deeper, until she’s quietly, dramatically sure it’s set up camp in her marrow.

Which is _annoying_. But what can you do.

(She could put her gloves on, she supposes. But those were made for looks more than warmth, and even if she could get her prickling, achey fingers to cooperate long enough to fit in the right places, they wouldn’t really help. Not on a day like _today_. So it’s just—not worth the effort.)

She blows an escaped strand of hair out of her face, scowling, jams her hands into her armpits, and muddles on.

A few minutes later, footsteps, slipping up beside her.

Nott tenses—then recognizes Beau’s light footfalls and makes herself go lax again. And sure enough, when she glances up and to her left, there’s Beau.

Unexpectedly, she’s _also_ hunched over with her hands jammed in her armpits. (It’s kind of funny, honestly, but Nott doesn’t laugh, because Beau looks grumpy, and Nott’s doing the same thing anyway, so.)

Beau catches her eye and Nott watches as her gaze falls to Nott's arms, crossed over her chest, and then her tucked-away hands. And then back to her face.

Beau frowns, so Nott does, too. Then Beau looks—maybe kind of wary? Nott isn’t sure. (She’s still, after all this time, working out Beau’s faces. She has annoyed down pretty well, and amused, and scheming. She thinks she’s maybe got concerned, too. The rest, though—including wary, which this may or may not be—those are kind of all still up in the air.)

Something shifts, up there with the eyebrows, and then Beau nods a little, glancing pointedly at Nott's wrists. “Cold as fuck, huh?”

 _No_ , Nott starts to say, because it’s not, really, the rest of her isn’t so bad, it’s just that her hands are _stupid_ and whine at the slightest bit of chill, and anyway no one _else_ seems bothered and she doesn’t want to seem pathetic—except. Except Beau’s clearly bothered, and Beau’s anything but pathetic, so probably Nott is being stupid, so she switches tacks midway through. “N’yeah.”

“Sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“My hands are fuckin _freezing_.” Beau lifts her elbows a little, like she’s imitating a bird, then jams them back down, scowling.

Nott makes a face. “Mine too.”

“Yeah, no shit.” A pause, as Beau winces. “I mean. I just figured. Kinda obvious. No one puts boiling hands in their armpits, right?”

Briefly, Nott envisions dismembered hands in a bubbling cauldron. Blinks the image away. “Right.”

“Anyway. Freezing, sucks, hate it.”

“Me too,” Nott says awkwardly. “This _wind_.”

Beau throws her hands in the air. “I _know_! It’s the _worst_.” She tucks them back. “Stupid as shit. And it _figures_ too. Shoulda fuckin known.”

“...You shoulda known everything was gonna freeze over outta nowhere?”

“ _Yeah_.”

“...How? Are you psychic now? D’you have psychic monk powers?”

“Shut up, no. It’s just—” Beau pauses. Pulls a face, glances at Caleb. “Never mind.”

Well now Nott _has_ to know. “What is it?”

“I said never mind.”

“I'm gonna find out anyway. I'll get Jester to help.” Nott starts to speed up, do just that, and—

“Ugh, okay, no, hold on. Hold on. I'll tell you, asshole, just—stop.”

Nott slows down, trails a little further behind Caleb, and grins. (Success.)

“Okay,” Beau says. “So, this is totally gonna make me sound like a batshit old lady, but. I shoulda known it was gonna get all frozen out here cause last night my hands got all achey.”

Nott blinks. “...You’re right. That does make you sound like a batshit old lady.”

“Fuck you.”

Nott grins. “You know that’s just an, an old wives’ tale, right? Bones don’t _really_ hurt when weather’s bad.”

“It’s not! I read it in a stupid book once, it’s like. A whole thing. Old injuries, temperature, air pressure or somethin. Science shit.”

“Old injuries?” Nott frowns. She’s seen Beau’s hands and they look fine.

“Yeah, I uh. Broke a few fingers, y’know, during monk training. They got healed real quick, so it’s whatever, I'm good. But whenever it gets _fuckin cold_ ….”

“Oh,” Nott says, and chews her lip. Considers what she knows about Beau’s monk stuff. (Not much. That there’s books involved, and Beau hates that. That there’s punching involved, and Beau _loves_ that. That the monks sort of kidnapped her. That her dad hoped they’d beat the—the spitfire out of her.) Chews her lip a little more. “And when you say _broke_. How d’you mean?”

“Uh. I kinda punched some stuff. ...Lotta stuff, actually. Stuff-punching was sorta parta the whole _deal_ , there’s a whole thing with microfractures and—whatever. Just sometimes I punched stuff I wasn’t supposed to punch? Like. Like walls.” She pauses. “I punched some fuckin walls. And didn’t exactly use proper _form_ , so. Had to go to the healers.”

“Oh.” Nott chews her lip one more time and tries not to look too relieved. “Right.” (Of course it was only trying to pick a fight with a wall. It’s _Beau_. She’d never just let something like, like _that_ happen. And—and she _likes_ the monks, it seems like, and she did say they liked all the spitfire stuff. And they’re not goblins over there, anyway. So of course their training isn’t like that. Of course. Of course.)

“...What did you _think_ I meant?”

“Uh, nothing! That! I thought you meant that. Hitting dumb stuff. Very you, classic Beau. I, I just wanted to hear you say it. For the laugh.”

“Nott.” Beau frowns at her.

Nott hunches her shoulders.

“What did you think I meant,” she asks again, slower.

“Nothing! Just, just.” Nott folds under the weight of Beau’s stare. “I just wondered if maybe the monks…”

“What?” Beau tilts her head to the side. “If _they_ broke ‘em? Like, _hit_ me or somethin?”

“I know it’s stupid. I was just—”

“I mean it’s not, exactly. Like, they totally hit me.”

Nott stares. They _did_? But—but Beau _likes_ them. Why does she like them if they—

“Part of all that monk jazz,” Beau continues. “Sparring practice. How d’you think I learned to hit so fuckin good?”

Oh. Oh, right. That—that makes sense.

“But they didn’t, like, beat me or anything, if that’s what you were thinkin.”

“I wasn’t!”

Beau gives her a look.

“...Much. I wasn’t much.”

“Uh-huh.” Beau drops the look, but still doesn’t seem convinced.

Nott waits for the question, the _why did you think that_ , the _why do you keep lying_ , the _what are you hiding_ —but it never comes. Beau just faces forward again and keeps walking.

Nott is grateful. It gives her time to breathe, to calm the stupid racing in her chest. But it also gives her time to think about how much her _stupid_ hands hurt, even tucked in her armpits like this and as warm as they can possibly be. She scowls and untucks them, because fuck it. Not worth the effort of keeping them still, not if they’re just going to ache _anyway_.

Which they’ve been doing for ages. Ever since they stepped outside this morning. (She really wishes they’d taken the cart. It might be _slightly warmer_ in the cart. Also she could burrow by Caleb, and he’s usually warm, so that might help.)

...Actually, before that, too, a bit. Not constantly, not like now, but—they’ve been sort of twingey since yesterday, off and on. (And didn’t Beau say that hers hurt, last night? Was it maybe the same sort of—? And no one else is shoving their hands in their armpits right now, just the two of them. So. So—)

“What was that thing you said,” Nott asks suddenly, “about air pressure and stuff?”

“Oh,” Beau says. “Uh. I dunno. Something about when it changes, or the temperature or whatever. Does somethin to the joints. Makes ’em hurt. Or. Be more sensitive or whatever. I dunno, I only read it once. And I didn’t _really_ read it, y’know? Just kinda.” She mimes flipping through pages. “And it was a long-ass time ago.”

“Oh,” Nott says. “Right.” It still sounds like bullshit, but she makes a mental note to ask Caleb later. He’ll know.

“Why d’you ask?”

Nott shrugs. “My hands kinda get like that sometimes too. So. Just wondering.”

“Hah! _Now_ who’s the old lady!”

Nott pretends to think. Then, “Still you. I'm not _convinced_ , just curious.”

“Oh fuck off. How d’you explain yours getting all fucky, if it’s just an old wives’ tale?”

“Easy. They’re always like that.”

“Bullshit.”

“Okay, not _always_. But sometimes, and not _just_ when the weather’s all gross.”

“Weird. Your healer must’ve did a shitty job. Or medic or whatever. Whoever set the bones.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nott says. “No one set them.”

-

 _Nott is young and her left hand won’t listen when she tries to wiggle her fingers. It also aches, and crunches a bit, but the not-listening bothers her more. It feels wrong, in a way the other things don’t. (Hands can hurt and they can crunch and they can twinge and they can bruise, and that’s all fine—but they shouldn’t just_ not listen _. That isn’t natural. That isn’t right.)_

_She goes to the healer, hand dangling careful at her side. (She knows better than to cradle it. She doesn’t want to seem like she’s seeking undue sympathy.)_

_She doesn’t want it fixed, necessarily. (Though it would be nice, she knows it’s unlikely. There’s no bone sticking through, after all.) She just wants it looked at. (She just wants to know how bad it is, because not knowing is making it a little hard to breathe, which is making it hard to focus on her mentor’s instructions, which is going to get her hand swatted all over again when she inevitably fucks up all the steps. Again.)_

_The healer looks at it for all of a minute, tells her there’s a break, and asks her how she got it._

_Nott half-lies on instinct. She fell off the border-wall, she says. She was trying to run on it, she says. It won’t happen again, she says. (All true—but that was a week ago. And when she pushed herself to her feet, a week ago, her hand listened fine. The not-listening came later, after she fucked the hell up on the job again.)_

_By the look on her face, the healer doesn’t believe a word of it. Nott waits for the accusation, the questioning, the lecture, the_ tell the truth _._

 _It doesn’t come. Instead, the healer only frowns at her and says, “You’re damn right it won’t. Let this be a lesson to you, girl. Next time, keep your balance.” (The sharpness in her words says as well as anything—_ next time, don’t come crying to me _.)_

_-_

_Nott is young and her right hand hurts. It still listens, though, so it’s probably fine._

_She doesn’t go to the healer. She just avoids using it, for the next couple of days, as much as she can. She’s clumsy, and mucks up several things—but she is always clumsy, and she always mucks up everything, so it’s fine._

_No one notices anything different._

_-_

_Nott is young and her right hand hurts. It still listens, though, so it’s definitely fine._

_She avoids using it, and, at night, when everyone is sleeping and no one is looking at her, she cradles it careful, and sticks it above her head before she goes to sleep so she won’t roll over on it._

_-_

_Nott is young and her left hand hurts like hell. She’s apprenticed with the healer now, though, so she knows what to do. (Kind of.)_

_She binds it in the dark, when everyone is sleeping, with a few strips of bandage she’s filched from the healer’s stores. (She’ll put them back in the morning.)_

_It’s technically against tradition, it’s technically interfering with the lesson, it’s technically probably a bit frowned upon, maybe? But, she figures, but—it’s using the other lessons she’s been learning. So that makes it okay._

_(When she’s discovered, on the sixth night, the healer makes it clear that not only is it not okay, but she’s been doing the binding wrong anyway. A lesson unlearned twice over.)_

_-_

_Nott is a little older, and a little wiser, and her right hand hurts._

_She knows, now, that it’s allowed to bind things like this herself. Hiding it is the problem, and using stolen materials._

_Nott is a little older, and a little wiser, so she doesn’t ask for any. (Tradition is tradition, and Nott is far from favored.)_

_She just elevates it when she can, sticks it unused in a pocket when she can’t, and moves on._

_-_

_Nott is a little older, and a little wiser, and both her hands ache. It’s not a new ache, though, just an old one, come back complaining like the bastard it is._

_She sticks her hands in the snow til they go numb, and she moves on._

_-_

_Nott's hands ache, and she massages them carefully._

_-_

_Nott's hands ache, and she shakes them out._

_-_

_Nott's hands ache, and she ignores them._

-

“...What?”

Oops. Said something weird. Said something _really_ weird, for _Beau_ to be looking at her like that.

“I mean, that explains why your hands are so janky, I guess, but—” Beau frowns. “Why not. Goblins don't have medics?”

“They do.”

“Then why not?”

Nott thinks about her conversation with Jester, ages ago now, and all the confusion and explaining and feelings, and thinks about doing that here, now, in the cold, when they still have several miles of walk ahead. “No reason.”

“Uh, yeah, no. You had a pass before, but you don’t get to walk out of this one. You put it out there. You said it’s stupid. Why?”

Ugh. Fine. “Cause then it’s a waste of a lesson.”

“...Uh.” Beau furrows her brow. “In Common, Nott?”

Nott rolls her eyes, and says, very slowly, like she’s talking to a child, “You fix the bones, you don’t learn anything. You fuck up again. Waste of a lesson.”

Beau frowns. “Okay. One question. Or. Two. First, the lesson is a broken bone?”

“Obviously.”

“...Right. Question two. Is this, like. You fall out of a tree, break your arm, and then you learn not to climb the tree so shitty the next time?”

“Well,” Nott says. “It can be.”

“But it’s not always.” Beau untucks her hands and runs one through her hair. “Right. Okay. So when you were worried about the monks—”

It isn’t a question, and she doesn’t finish saying it, so Nott doesn’t answer. (Just wonders at how quickly this has all come spiraling out. Which is fine, because like she told Jester it’s not a big deal, and not a secret. It’s just—unexpected. She chose to tell Jester. She hasn’t chosen to tell Beau. Beau’s just sort of. Wormed a few key bits out of her and figured it out from there. Somehow.) ( _Maybe_ , Nott thinks with faint, distant amusement, _maybe she really does have psychic monk powers_.)

“Shit.” Beau tugs on her topknot. “Can I ask one more question?”

“I guess.” (She might as well. She knows so much already.)

“How many lessons?”

“Four,” Nott says, without hesitation. It’s a good number, not too round, not too high, hopefully not too low. (Nott's been weird enough, and her hands are—to use Beau’s word—janky enough that Nott doesn’t think Beau will believe her if she says just once. And if Beau doesn’t believe her, she’ll keep poking, and then Nott will have to admit that she isn’t really sure.)

(Because she’s never been able to decide what counts and what doesn’t, and because she never bothered keeping track, and—)

“Shit,” Beau says again. “That’s. That’s really fucked up.”

“Yeah, well,” Nott says, with a spiny smile and shrug. “That’s goblins for you.”

“I guess. But—fuck, Nott.”

She shrugs again. Wonders if maybe Beau has the wrong idea about what lessons are and how they work. Wonders if she should correct her, maybe, like with Jester.

“Want me to kill ‘em for you? Cause like. I can. I will. That’s on the table.”

Beau, Nott decides, is probably joking. Maybe. Probably. (Beau isn’t above killing, and even if she _was_ there’s nothing wrong with killing goblins, it’s not like killing _people_ —but still. This isn’t a totally serious offer.) (From Caleb, it would be serious. But it isn’t from Caleb. He never said anything of the sort, when Nott explained about goblin teaching methods and her shitty, shitty fingers.)

But just in case she isn’t joking, Nott says, “Maybe leave it there for now.” (It isn’t a _don’t_. Just a _wait_. A _don’t get all weird about it, for the love of all the gods_.)

“Okay,” Beau says. “Cool. Tabled. Standing offer. Cool. Cool cool cool.”

“Cool cool cool.”

There’s a long, awkward pause. They walk a little faster, catch back up with the group.

“My _hands_ ,” Nott says finally—Beau’s eyes instantly cut over to her—“are _freezing_.”

Beau visibly relaxes. (Nott adds _relieved_ to the list of Beau-faces she knows.) “I bet mine are more freezing.”

“Impossible,” Nott says immediately. “Mine are the freezingest.”

“That’s not even a word, man.”

“Yes it is. I just said it.”

“ _Nein_ , Beauregard is right,” Caleb pipes up from a few feet ahead. “The word does not exist.”

“See!”

Nott opens her mouth and stalls. She wants to win, but that means telling Caleb he is wrong. (And of course he _can_ be wrong, sometimes, like anyone else, on rare occasions—but she tries not to tell him so.) She scowls instead. “Well. Well it should! It’s a good not-word!”

“Ha!” Beau says. “Nott-word.”

Nott grins. (Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Caleb nearly-smile, a small upward tug on one side of his mouth.)

“Anyway,” Beau continues. “Nott-word or not, mine are definitely more freezing than yours.”

“Prove it!”

“Only one way to find out.”

There’s a split second where their eyes lock, a moment of pure, primal understanding. Then Beau glances at Caleb. Nott shakes her head emphatically and glances further ahead at Jester, and Beau nods—and then they both rush forward and press their hands to her skin (Beau the back of her neck, and Nott a bit of her forearm).

She shrieks, flails, shoves them away. “What was that for!”

“To see whose hands are colder!”

“Also, fun.”

“That too but mostly the first thing _who won_?” Nott demands, all in one breath.

“I don’t know! Both your guyses hands are really cold! What did you _do_ , stick them on the _ground_?”

“Maybe we should try it again,” Nott says, wiggling her fingers. “So you can really get a good—”

“Nope!” Jester flounces forward, skipping over to Fjord and stopping just in front of him. “You guys have fun,” she says over her shoulder. “I'm going to be over here, definitely _not_ using Fjord as a meat shield from your evil ice-fingers!”

“Thank you for that,” Fjord says dryly.

“You are welcome!”

Nott glances questioningly at Beau. They _could_ attack Fjord next, but he’s kinda far, and she doesn’t really feel like running.

Beau makes a face and shakes her head.

Nott sighs dramatically. “Guess we’ll never know.”

“Guess so. But it’s definitely me.”

“You’re wrong.” Nott shakes her hands a little to warm them up. “But okay. I guess you’ll see when all my fingers fall off from frostbite.”

“Yeah, well—”

Nott loses the rest of Beau’s sentence in the _floompf_ of something heavy falling on her head. She flails, a little, trying to push the whatever-it-is off—and recognizes it a split second before she tears it away. It’s soft, and thick, but worn a bit ragged in places, and kind of dirty, and—

It’s Caleb’s scarf. She blinks at it, and then at him, scarfless, walking ahead of her.

“You can wrap that around your hands,” he says, without turning around.

Nott has seen Caleb take the scarf off outside of a bathhouse all of two times, and both were to tie it round a horrifically bleeding wound. She starts to hand it back. “Caleb—”

“What the hell, man! Where’s _my_ scarf?”

Caleb turns his head, blinking. “I only have the one.”

“Rude! You’re just gonna let me freeze wh—”

A snap, and then Frumpkin appears on Beau’s shoulders, and she swears loudly.

“There,” Caleb says, turning back. “Now you have a scarf.”

Nott bets he’s got that little half-smile. Bets he’s real tickled with himself. But he won’t laugh at his own joke, so she laughs for him.

“Fuck off, Nott!”

“He is quite warm,” Caleb says, as though there has been no interruption. “And should keep your fingers from falling off.”

Nott giggles, and Beau grumbles, and Nott giggles more as Beau hauls Frumpkin around to her front and holds him awkwardly in one arm and pets him with her free hand.

Then she looks down at her own hands, finds herself still clutching the scarf. She forgot to toss it back. She should still do that. Caleb’s going to get cold. He doesn’t need to be cold. So she should give it back.

She’ll give it back.

...But maybe in a few minutes, she thinks, as she stares at it. She doesn’t want him to think she’s rejected his gift, after all.

So she wraps it round her hands, carefully, and then holds them, bundled, close to her chest, and keeps walking.

(They still ache, a bit, in that dull, echoey way. But they’re a little warmer, after a while, and surrounded by fabric so soft she almost forgets the complaint, and the coarseness of her skin, and the sharpness of her claws.)

It’s nice.

(Later, she steals a pair of fingerless gloves, soft and warm and _almost_ the right shade of blue, and she jams them in Beau’s bag.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)


	4. Yasha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beta courtesy of [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi)  
> (thanke!!)  
> alternative title also courtesy of [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi): Nott Cannot Unknot

Nott sits in the thicket and tugs at her awful, knotted hair and scowls.

It won't cooperate. Too twisted, too matted, too stupid to separate between her stupider fingers. Which is _dumb_ because they weren’t this bad yesterday and she hasn't done anything terribly wild since, so—so what gives?

(So she tangled with a clever bastard of a lock. So it was devised by an evil genius she half-wants to strangle and half-wants to pour a drink and maybe, probably both, and maybe not necessarily in that order. So she spent half an hour, give or take, cursing the lock and its maker both, and her clumsiness besides, before it finally clicked open. So she’s got a bit of a twinge. So _what_. That’s no reason she shouldn’t be able to fucking—)

Nott scowls harder and tugs at her hair again. Her claws catch on a few of the snarls, and she yanks them free, half-hissing, then glares at the greasy, dirt-bound strands still stuck to them.

Stupid. Stupid.

She drags her fingers through her hair, quick and fast, and again, and again, until they go through without catching quite so much. And then she shakes all the ripped-out strands loose, and then she sets about separating what hair remains on her head into sections.

It takes a little doing, because it’s still tangled—of course it’s still tangled, when _isn’t_ it tangled—but she manages. Makes an even three, and begins the slow, easy process of braiding it all back up.

(Or at least, it should be easy. It’s usually easy. But since she’s all—all _butterfingers_ today, it’s mostly just slow, as she keeps losing her grip on the sections and letting strands fall free and making the whole thing too tight one moment and too loose the next and so terribly uneven she has to start over and—)

She starts over no less than six times, continually dissatisfied with this and that, and then she falls, finally, into the usual rhythm. (Outside, middle. Other side, middle. Outside, middle. Other side, middle. Outside…)

She gets halfway through the braid and then pauses, glancing down at the little pile of thin, trailing vines by her left knee. Does she want to weave them in? They’re very pretty, with their little white flowers, and that’s—it was the whole point of gathering them, the whole point of re-doing her braid in the first place….

But it’s taken long enough to get to this point, so. Maybe best not. But—but she _wants_ to. Kind of. A little. A lot. (They’re very pretty.)

But it’s not worth the effort. (But they’re _pretty_. And, and good luck besides.)

...Maybe, she thinks. Maybe she’ll just wrap one round the end of the braid. Less hassle, but she still gets to use the flowers. And arguably practical even aside from the luck, with it reinforcing the little leather strip she usually uses to tie the end of the braid in place. (Not _very_ arguably, as the strip doesn’t strictly _need_ reinforcing—it’s always served her just fine on its own—but no one really needs to know that, and that’s not the point anyway. The point is it’s arguable at _all_. Which it is. And so that’s enough.)

So yeah. Yeah, okay. She’ll do it.

Nott finishes braiding her hair easily after that, even with her stupid, clumsy fingers. Then she holds the end of the braid in one hand and picks up the little leather strip with the other, and tries to fix it on.

Can’t. It’s not been untied, is still sitting in its little circle. (Of course it is. In her haste to get started, she just yanked it off as-was, and then forgot to untie it after, like she _always_ does. When will she _learn_ —?)

She scowls and tries to pick apart the knot one-handed. (Doable in _theory_ , she’s managed it before—but in _practice_ , less so. Her efforts only seem to make it go tighter.)

She scowls deeper, drops the braid, which instantly goes a bit loose, because of _course_ it does, and starts picking apart the knot in earnest.

Or. Trying to. (It still won’t go, and every time she _thinks_ she’s figured out the right bit to tug at or the right angle to attack it from, it turns out she’s wrong and she has to start all over again. And even when she’s _positive_ she’s found the right way to untangle it, the stupid thing won’t untangle.)

Nott holds it closer to her face and keeps trying. And trying, and trying, and trying, scowling so hard all the while her jaw actually _hurts_. She starts muttering to herself, after a bit, because it’s that or fling the strip across the thicket, and if she does that she’ll never find it again. (Or explode, and if she does that _she’ll_ never be found again, except in gooey bits and pieces.)

She tries gnawing on it, after a while, still grumbling. It’ll work, probably. It usually does, when she can’t do something the proper way. (With the exception, usually, of lockpicking. She’s not yet been able to bite off a stubborn padlock—not, of course, that she’s actually tried. She has too much sense, too much dignity, and too much fondness for her ability to eat to ever try something like that.) (But little things, like this, softer things—a quick bite usually works.)

It doesn’t work.

She tries again. Maybe if she wedges her teeth right _there_ …?

Nothing. She scowls past the strip, muttering lower now, more guttural, spitting a little, seconds from casting Mage Hand and just having _done_ with it—

Stops, abruptly. (Footsteps.)

She whirls around, leather hanging out of her mouth, hands free and reaching inside her cloak—

Yasha blinks back at her.

Nott drops her hand to her side, drops the scowl, feels every centimeter of the strip lying cold and damp against her lower lip and her chin. Spits it out into her hand, after a long, awkward beat. “What?”

“Oh, uh. Nothing,” Yasha says. “I was just walking.”

 _Well, keep walking_ , Nott wants to say. But doesn’t, because Yasha doesn’t deserve it, not just because Nott's all—dumb. “Walking where?” she asks instead. (Is Yasha leaving again? There haven’t been any storms, that Nott's seen, but….)

“Uh. Here? I suppose? I was...just walking. And then I saw you.” A pause. “And then.” She gestures vaguely at her own mouth.

“Right.” Nott makes a mental note to find the nearest rock to die under. Just because she looks like a goblin doesn’t mean she needs to be caught _acting_ like one. (Never mind that no self-respecting goblin would have used their teeth for something like this, that any of them with sense would’ve been more sanitary and used their fingers—isn’t the point. The point is using your teeth is uncivilized and goblins are uncivilized and goblins _do_ use their teeth sometimes when regular folk don’t, so to an outsider Nott was obviously just being your average—)

“...ry?”

Nott blinks. “S—uh, sorry?”

“I said, are you hungry? I have some jerky, I think, if—”

“No, I'm fine.” Nott blinks again. “...Why would I be hungry?”

“Well,” Yasha says. She gestures to the strip in Nott's hand. “You were...chewing on that? And, you know. I have chewed leather when I have been hungry. So.”

“Oh. I. I wasn’t.” Nott stops wanting to find a large rock. Starts feeling like one has been pin-dropped in her chest, instead. (She makes a mental note to find Yasha another rat. You can never have too many.) “I'm not hungry,” she says, apologetic.

“Oh.” Yasha doesn’t ask for any more details, but the confusion’s painted across her face loud enough even _Nott_ can read it, and the silence drags, and Nott has never been very good with dragging silences, and—

“I was just trying to untie it, is all.”

“Oh.” Yasha nods, as though what Nott has said makes perfect sense—which it _does_ , but people don’t get that, usually, unless they’re Caleb. “Okay.”

“Yeah,” Nott says, and wrings her hands absentmindedly. (Turns over the last few hours in her head. She’s pretty sure she saw a rat, at some point. If she can just remember _where_ …)

“...Are you all right?”

Nott blinks, all thoughts of rats jarred right out of her head. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re—” Yasha wrings her hands.

“Oh.” Nott drops hers to her lap, grins. “Yeah, no, I'm great. My hands’re just being a bit stupid is all.”

“...Stupid?”

“...Yes? Stupid. Y’know, like. Dumb. Like shitty.”

“Shitty?”

“Yeah. Like—you know, you’ve seen.” (Gods only know how many times, now. Just a second ago, and then earlier with the door, and weeks back, the fiasco with Frumpkin’s yarn, and at some point there was a stubborn plant, and a jar, and another door, and—she’s _definitely_ seen, is the point.)

“I...” Yasha furrows her brow, just a little. “I haven’t, much. You know, you cover them up.”

For a moment Nott is very, very puzzled. Then, “Oh, I didn’t mean like—not like _that_. Though, I mean. Yeah. They _look_ pretty stupid too. But no.”

“Then how did you mean?”

“Just—they’re stupid. You know, they complain about stuff. Stupid stuff. Like.” She holds up the strip. “Or really stubborn locks.” She makes another face.

“...Complain?”

“Yeah, like. Twinge?” That’s not the right word, probably, judging by the utter lack of comprehension on Yasha’s face. Nott casts around for another one, and remembers that Beau said hers get achey. Which isn’t an _inaccurate_ word, but still _definitely_ sounds like an old lady one, and feels much whinier than Nott wants. So instead she steals the one Jester used all those months ago. “...Sort of like hand cramps, when you’re writing a lot? If I use ‘em too much.”

“Oh.” A pause, and Yasha’s blank-faced again now. “And that is why you tried to untie that with your teeth?”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Nott says. (Did she...actually not get that before?) “Why else?”

“Well,” Yasha says carefully, and for a split second Nott thinks she is going to say something about goblins, or all the other times she’s caught Nott opening things with her teeth, or maybe both. But what comes out of her mouth instead is, “I just thought you were not very strong?”

Nott blinks. Finds herself torn between stinging hurt (she isn’t _that_ weak) and wry amusement (Yasha’s not entirely wrong). Settles on the latter and laughs. “No, no. Or, well. I'm _not_. But mostly it’s just—” She gestures. “They’re shitty.”

Yasha nods, quiet, slow. “I see.”

“Yeah.” Nott picks at the knot and scowls and wonders what Yasha is thinking, what quiet conclusions she is coming to.

“Well,” Yasha says at last. “Would you, er, like me to get that for you?”

“Um.” Nott stalls mid-thought. No room for any kind of answer or opinion, only startled fuzz. (Of all the things she could have said—?)

“I am pretty good with knots and things.”

“Notts and things?” Nott says with an uncertain grin.

“Yes,” Yasha says seriously. “I, you know, I did work at a circus, and I learned—” She pauses. “Oh.” The shadow of a smile spreads over her face.

Nott lets her own grin stretch a bit, gives her fingerguns. “Gotcha.”

“You did.” A pause. “But, yes—I can untie that for you, if...if you like.”

Again, Nott blanks. “It’s, um. Sort of...drooly.”

“That is fine.” The shadow-smile tugs higher one one side of her mouth. “Molly is—” It shrinks. “Was sort of drooly, when he slept, sometimes. And I never minded him.”

“Right,” Nott says, filing that away and trying to think of another joke (the smile was nice, she’d like to bring it back if she can). But everything she comes up with in the next three seconds is about Molly, so there’s nothing, so she just says, “Um. You. If you want, you can try. I loosened it a lot, so.”

“Let me see.”

Nott hands her the circle-strip, and sets about fixing her braid again, because obviously Yasha will have the strip free in no time, because the problem isn’t the knot, really, it’s the Nott.

And sure enough, before she even has time to award herself points for her own joke, Yasha’s handing her back the newly-untied strip. “Here.”

Nott ties the strip round the end of her braid and knots it twice, sharp. Breathes in, soft. Breathes out, softer. “...Thanks.”

Yasha nods.

“Really though.” She tugs her braid, somewhere between quiet and twitchy. “I could've got it. Always do.”

_-_

_Nott's got a jammed finger and three assignments past due and a mentor breathing down her neck and there’s absolutely no way she’s going to finish them all before he loses patience. (She’s about run out of it, herself, the work’s dragging so_ long _.)_

_She switches hands and keeps working and finishes two out of three and he is—impossibly—mollified._

_(It doesn’t last.)_

_-_

_Nott hears the barrage of instructions, but doesn’t really listen to them. Most of her attention is on making sure she doesn’t drop the large hammer on her toes. (She’s left-handed today and still working out the grip.)_

_She hefts it a little, tightens her grasp. Leans it back against her chest, just a bit. (Doesn’t like the feel of it, pressing so close, or the reminder that it can press at all, that she’s even got flesh for it to brush—but leaves it there all the same.)_

_She nods, at the end, when the elder asks if she got all that, and she hefts the hammer again, and she keeps her eyes on the other apprentices (all two of them, one nearing her mastery) as she begins to work alongside them._

_It’s slower going than it should be, left-handed, the other aching at her side, and the others outpace her in minutes, and it’s stupid, and it’s stupid—but she's quicker than yesterday, and quicker still once she discovers wrapping the handle in her cloak makes it easier to grip. Quick enough, in the end, that she finishes before night falls and the elder returns._

_She has a few sharp words about the quality of Nott's work, and several more about her general technique—but none at all about the quantity. (That’s a win, sort of.)_

_-_

_Nott watches the elder snap the twine with his fingers. She tries, and gets only dark green marks and deep impressions on her palms for her efforts._

_Stupid._

_She scores the twine with her claws first, next time, and it snaps easily in her grip._

_She grins._

_-_

_Nott holds the pen as she's been taught. It slips and slides and feels wrong. Hurts, a little. Then a lot, as time wears on and the page is covered in more and more scribbles._

_She shakes out her hands, quick, scowling, then throws herself back in. Pauses, after a while. Adjusts her grip so the pen rests in the space between her second and third fingers, not second-and-first. Sticks the second on top. Curls the first on the other side._

_The pen slips less. Feels better. Her handwriting improves. (Her note-taking ability does not.)_

_-_

_Nott takes to the master torturer’s tools like a duck to saltwater. (Not voluntarily, not naturally, with some distaste—but also with relative ease. She does not sink; she paddles.)_

_The tools she holds in various odd ways. (Slipping nearly dropping but catching them.)_

_The screws she tightens with her sleeves dropped down over her hands._

_The knives she switches from hand to hand as they tire and tire and tire in turn._

_The ropes she fastens with shortcut loops, twice as tight._

_(The food she brings with both hands gripping the tray.)_

_-_

_Nott tugs at the winecork with trembling, too-sober fingers and thinks of all the meanings of the word_ fruitless _. It doesn't budge, the shitbrick._

_She bites down on it and yanks, and it comes free still stuck to her tooth. (Dammit.)_

_She removes it and drinks long and deep. Opens the next bottle with her teeth too, though her fingers have gone satisfyingly still._

_-_

_Nott tears fabric into little strips with her teeth and wraps them careful round her hands, thinking of hammers and sharp implements and gray sleeves over green palms._

_She handles most things easier, now. (The grit helps, some, and the buffer, but mostly it's just that many jobs are simpler when you can see what you're doing, and she doesn't mind looking down so much, now.)_

_-_

_Nott tries to slash the rope with her claws. Little luck. They snag, almost tear, and leave the rope perfectly intact. (Of course. Of course.)_

_She pulls out her dagger and hacks at it instead._

_Quick success._

_-_

_Nott finds the mechanisms to disengage the trap and sets to work—and pulls back a full two minutes later, stiff-fingered, clumsy._

_She considers. Steps away, casts Mage Hand._

_The trap’s taken care of in seconds._

-

Yasha nods. “Well, yes. You are, you know. You are persistent. And...and resourceful?”

This, Nott thinks, is a very kind way of saying she’s more stubborn than the offspring of Caleb and a brick wall, and always thinking up silly solutions to simple things-that-shouldn’t-be-problems. (Like using her teeth to loosen a knot in some string.) She wonders, for a moment, if maybe Yasha took lessons from Molly on how to say rude things in nice ways. (Though maybe it was the other way around. As much everyone—Nott included—likes to remember him as a wonderfully kind rainbow weirdo, she still hasn’t forgotten the barbs on that silver tongue of his….)

“But.” Yasha falls silent just long enough for Nott to wonder what awful thing she’s holding back. “You seemed...angry.”

“...Angry?”

“Frustrated.”

Nott frowns. (She liked the sound of the first one better. _Angry_ may ring a little too much of goblin savagery, but _frustrated_ rings of it _and_ of childishness, and the combination sours her tongue.)

“I have seen the look before,” Yasha continues, seemingly oblivious, “so I thought I would...offer.”

“Oh,” Nott says, deflating a little. Then, because Yasha is Yasha, and Nott has seen her fight many times, and is very familiar with the stony, sometimes-jagged look she often gets in the thick of things, “Was it in the mirror?”

Something shutters down over Yasha’s eyes. “No.”

“Oh,” Nott says again, and her shoulders slump even more because she is very familiar with that look, too. (It is the one that settles in when Fjord slips and calls Mister Clay the wrong name, when Jester speaks Infernal, when they pass particularly hideous items in clothes shops, when someone wanders by with a particular swagger, when nothing at all happens and Nott looks back and sees Yasha staring up on a cloudless night.)

She wonders, quietly, what Molly ever had to be frustrated about. Wonders how Yasha helped him.

Doesn't dare ask, because Yasha’s face is doing that thing, and she seems upset and even angry and it’s Nott's fault, and even though they are (maybe, maybe, sort of, kind of) friends now Nott still can't forget that Yasha is very large and she is very small, and—

“Sorry,” she offers, and picks up one of the little vines, and brushes her thumb over the small white blossoms.

“It's all right.” Yasha stands there a moment, a little awkwardly, and then turns to go.

Nott watches, and swallows, and wishes for another, heavier cloak, and twirls the little vine in her fingers, and—

“Hey.”

Yasha stops. Turns back, blank-faced once more. “Uh. Yes?”

Fuck. Nott hasn’t thought this far (hasn’t thought at all really, the word’s just sort of tumbled out). “You, uh.” Nott twirls the little vine in her fingers again, nervously, and _oh_ , there’s something. “You like flowers.”

“...Yes.”

“Would you like this?” She holds it out, a little limp, a little pathetic. “For your book?”

“Oh.” A pause, then, “...Yes.” Yasha pulls her book out of her pack, takes the vine, places it carefully in. “Thank you.” She tucks the book away.

Nott nods. “I, um. I could put one in your hair, too? If you like? You know, you. You have all those braids, and it’s good luck? And I'm pretty good at them, I do Caleb’s all the time. And mine, obviously. And—”

Again the shuttering over her eyes.

“Or,” Nott says, because she’s fucked up again and knows it but can’t stop talking. "Or you could help me do the others? Maybe not Fjord, his hair’s too short—but Caleb and Jester and Clay and maybe Beau?”

“...Er,” Yasha says. “That might be nice, yes.”

Oh thank gods.

“Great!” Nott jumps to her feet and gathers all the vines and stuffs them in her pockets. “Let's go!”

She scurries off toward the camp, just barely keeping ahead of Yasha, and in no time at all wrangles the others into agreeing. (Caleb and Clay and Jester take little convincing, but Beau’s weirdly against the whole concept—at least until Nott suggests that maybe Yasha can give her just a very small one, or weave a strand around the ribbon she ties her hair back with, at which point Beau relents so easily Nott has to bite back a laugh.)

Yasha is little help in the process, of course. Mostly she just hovers awkwardly and nods at mostly-appropriate intervals, but that’s all right. (She looks a little less closed, now, and she’s stopped paying any attention to Nott, so that’s nice and all that matters really.)

Yasha, Beau, Jester, and Clay form a little braiding train, leaving Caleb for Nott. (This suits her fine. Suits them both fine, she suspects.)

“How many?” Nott asks, as she crouches behind him with a vine in each hand.

“However many you like, my friend.”

She’s tempted to give him twelve—it’s the first number she thinks of, and it’s a good, solid number—but she settles for just two. She doesn’t have enough vines for twelve. (That, and for all Caleb is usually fine with her touching him, there is still, she knows, such a thing as too much. She doesn’t want to push it. All the good luck in the world isn’t worth that.)

Her fingers get stupid again partway through Caleb’s second braid. She ignores them until it’s finished, and grumbles a little when she inevitably messes up, but doesn’t scowl. (She doesn’t need Yasha asking to help with this, too. A hair tie, sure. A jar, fine. But not this.)

(Never this.)

(This is hers.)

When the braid is fixed as pretty and intricate as she can make it, she scoots back. Thinks of running her hands through the unbraided sections of Caleb’s hair, just a little. It might make them shut up, and would definitely help get some of the tangles out.

But she doesn’t, in the end. (Her claws need trimming, they’ve got too long, so they might snag, and that would hurt him. She isn’t having that.)

She just smiles, and sticks her hands in her pockets, and says, “There.”

“ _Danke_.”

“Of course, Caleb. You look very handsome.”

He ignores the compliment, as ever. “Would, ah, would you like me to do yours, as well?”

She smiles at his kindness, as ever. “No, that’s okay. I already fixed it myself.”

But that reminds her. She wanted one stuck in her hair tie, before. She just...got distracted.

That’s fine, though. There are two decent-length vines left. She walks over and takes them both. Plucks the blossoms off of one of them and tucks the little stems under the tie. (Tucks the other in her pocket.)

“That is pretty,” Caleb says, and she smiles indulgently.

“That is pretty,” Yasha says, later, sitting a ways away from her, nodding at her braid, and Nott shrugs, takes a sip from her flask.

“It’s filthy. _Yours_ are pretty.”

“Mine are also filthy,” Yasha says. “And they don’t have flowers.”

 _Yes_ , Nott wants to say. _But yours aren’t green. They’re all fancy and magic._

But she doesn’t. Just fishes the last vine out of her pocket and hands it to Yasha. “Here.”

Yasha makes no move to put it in her hair, but she doesn’t give it back, either. Just looks at it a moment and says, “Oh. Thank you.”

Nott shrugs dismissively. “Thank _you_.” She indicates the camp. “For helping me get these bozos in line.” A pause, as she considers. (Does she really want to re-open the can of worms?) “...And, you know.” She flicks the end of her braid. “This. Saved me some time.” (And probably some nail-biting, but Yasha doesn’t need to know that part.)

“Of course.” A pause. “And, you know. If you ever get into fights with any more knots…?”

Nott laughs. Fights. That’s good. Accurate. (And silly, and just sideways enough, and so endearing Nott can’t help but nudge her.) “Sure,” she says. “I know where to find you.”

Yasha nods. A moment later, she wanders away. Nott watches her go, and then turns back to her flask.

Unsaid things linger over her shoulders like fireflies, but they don’t creep, so she lets them be, and drinks, and thinks of stupid, stubborn things—of stiff fingers and sore teeth, and snagged claws and left-handed days, groups of two and groups of seven, and purple bastards and sharp tongues, and knots, and knots, and Notts.

She thinks, and she drinks, and the sky grows dark around her.

(Later, Nott spies a vine tied round Yasha’s wrist.)

(Later, Nott catches a fat rat.)

(Later, Nott spits and scowls at a stubborn winecork, and thinks not of cold winter chill or footsteps in halls-not-hers or too-sober fingers or stupid simplicity—but of Yasha.)

(She doesn’t go find her—but she thinks.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)


	5. Fjord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi) for the beta!!

Nott sits in the corner and drinks idly, petting Frumpkin with her toes. He doesn’t move. Nott would wonder if this means Caleb is looking through him right now, if maybe she should stop, except that she doesn’t care. (After all, if he is in there, and it bothers him, he’ll just zip back to his own senses.)

The doorknob creaks. She jumps, and her toes don’t so much poke Frumpkin as ram straight into him, kicking him a good yard away, and her eyes flick to the door as it opens, and—

She spares a second to glance over and make sure Frumpkin is okay (she doesn’t know how she’ll explain it to Caleb if he’s poofed—but he hasn’t, so it’s fine), and then she turns back to her flask. It’s only Fjord.

“Hey Nott,” he says.

“Mm.” She waves her flask at him in lieu of proper reply.

“Got a proposition for you.”

She hides an eyeroll behind another swig.

“There’s kinda a challenge going on downstairs. Could use your help.”

She looks up.

“Sorta puzzle. S’got a buy-in,” Fjord continues, “but I'll cover that for you.”

She squints. “Why.”

He shrugs. “S’got a big payout. Group could do with some extra coin right about now.”

True enough. But— “How big.”

“Couple hundred gold, at this point. No one can solve the damn thing. We’ve all had a go, and Caleb’s down there trying right now, but—”

“He’ll get it. He’s very smart.”

“I dunno, he seems pretty stumped.”

“He’s very smart,” Nott repeats. Nothing ever stumps him, not really.

“Course he is, no doubt about it. But this is really more, uh, up your alley. Requires a certain...dexterity, y’could say.”

She frowns. “Caleb’s plenty dexterous.” (This isn’t, strictly speaking, true—Nott has seen Caleb miss his own mouth while eating and fumble apples thrown right to him—but damned if she’s going to badmouth him, especially not to _Fjord_.)

“Sure,” Fjord says smoothly (too smoothly, it reeks of lying), “But you’re the best outta all of us, yeah? And you’re so good with your hands, y’know, all that lockpickin shit? Y’can get this easy.”

Nott gives him a look that says flattery will get him nowhere.

“ _And_ it really is a lotta gold. And, hey—think I saw a few necklaces in the pot, too. And some buttons! Lots. Real shiny. Think some of ’em were real silver.”

Just for a moment, Nott contemplates murder. “Really.”

“Yeah! Y’get to keep those, of course.” He grins, over-wide and syrup-sticky.

“Of course,” she repeats, flat.

“So! Whaddya say? Y’gonna come down, help us out?”

Nott pretends to deliberate. “...I'll head down,” she says, after a fashion.

“Great! Let’s just—”

“—to watch Caleb solve it.”

Fjord blinks, and his face shifts, and she relishes every crestfallen line of it. (Serves the bastard right. When’s he gonna learn she’s not his baby sister? Baby _sitter_ , more like. Overgrown toddler asshole.)

“Well,” he says, after a bit. “All right. Think he’s almost outta time, though. Better hurry on down.”

Nott gestures to the door, and takes her time following after him. “Bet he’s already solved it.”

“We’ll see.”

“Bet you thirty gold.”

They head downstairs, and there’s a little crowd round one of the tables and Nott can _just_ see the familiar flash of red hair through all the shoulders. Caleb.

She frowns and makes a beeline for him, scrambling under an elf’s legs and shoving past a fat dwarf and a weedy human and weedier dragonborn, and setting herself firm in the space between his right side and the crowd. (His left is protected by the wall of the little booth he's occupying—and his front by the table and the small halfling man sitting across from him.)

Caleb’s gaze is fixed intractable on a funny linked set of silver rings—the puzzle, Nott supposes—but he must notice her anyway because his shoulders unwind a little with obvious relief and his fingers move even faster, twisting and clicking two rings into place in rapid succession. (Nott can almost imagine what it will look like when it's finished, all twisty like a braid, or one of Caleb’s fancy sigils.)

There are four rings left, now, and now three, after a bit of fumbling, and—

“Time's up!”

She scowls. “A few more seconds and he'd’ve had it!”

Caleb gives her a little smile and sets the puzzle ring down, takes her by the hand and pushes through the somewhat-dispersing crowd. Fjord follows, settles with them a few yards off.

“See?” He gestures at Caleb’s general self. “Couldn't do it, told you. Er. No offense Caleb.”

“None taken.”

“S’why we need _you_.”

“No. If Caleb can't do it, I can't either.”

“Now, Nott—” Fjord begins.

“He's very smart. If he can't solve it, it's unsolveable!”

Fjord shakes his head. “I saw the guy solve it when we started this whole business.”

“I did not,” Caleb offers. "Or I would have simply copied his movements.”

“Of course,” Nott says. “You're very smart. And me, I'm—well I'm not a _genius_.”

“You are with those hands,” Fjord says, all smiles and just a touch of _gold star, kiddo_. “All those doors you open and—and _buttons_ y’get your hands on. Mighty dexterous.”

She ignores the jab. “Sure, I'm plenty dexterous. But this is delicate work, I haven't practiced, and these things—” She wiggles her fingers. “—are a little, a little finicky with time pressure. So. So I can't.”

“Don't be silly. Course you can!” Fjord grins and leans forward conspiratorially, lowering his voice. “And if it's the time pressure you're worried about, Caleb can just—y'all have that Message thing, right? He can just whisper you instructions for the first half or so, I'm sure he's got it all down in there.”

“ _Ja_ , I do.”

“See? Just breeze right through that, and you'll have plenty of time to figure out the rest! Easy as pie.”

“Mm.”

“I'm tellin you, Nott, ’tween the two of you, y’got this in the bag! And just think, all those buttons!”

“Mmmmm.”

“Nott,” Fjord says, drawing out her name. “We've all put gold inta this, we really need to get it back, c’mon. I know y’can do it.”

“Even if I could, and I can't, I don't want to.” It isn't worth validating all this obnoxious cajoling, reinforcing Fjord’s perception of her as stupid and childish and greedy. (It also isn't worth the pain in the ass it seems it'll be—Caleb is rubbing at the backs of his hands and he never has trouble with them. His wrists, yes, sometimes, when he stays up all night writing—but never his hands. Gods only know what this stupid challenge will do to hers.)

“C’monnn.”

Nott opens her mouth to say no, and Fjord gets a funny look in his eyes. (She knows it, sort of. It's a Fluffernutter kind of look, in that it's the look he gave her when she first suggested Fluffernutter, and it's also a little bit, round the eyes, the look _she_ had, when she suggested it.) (A paradox combination she doesn't trust an inch.)

(And with good reason, it seems, because—)

Fjord turns back to the scrawny halfling, walks over a ways, raises a hand, and raises his voice, lays the charm on thick. “Sir? Pardon me, but I have a somewhat... _unusual_ request. You see, this one here has taken a shine to the buttons on that mighty fine coat of yours. Is there any chance, if she solves your puzzle, you might throw one in with the prize money?”

The man turns to look at Fjord, and then at Nott, and his face goes incredulous, and she opens her mouth to apologize for Fjord—explain that he's just an idiot, really, and she has no interest whatsoever in his fucking buttons, even if they _do_ look like nice ivory, or even any interest in entering at all, thanks, and don't mind him they'll just be going now—

But before she can spit out so much as the first syllable, the man laughs. “Why not,” he says. “Sure. If your tiny little lass can solve it, she can have one. Hells, she can have all of them.” He chuckles again. “I'll even throw in the ring.”

Nott's tongue sours.

“But one try only, and I want no waterworks after, sweetheart.”

Nott scowls behind the mask.

“Oh, I'll make sure of it,” Fjord says. Then, with poorly disguised mirth, “Hear that, darlin? Even the ring!”

“Uh-huh.” Nott ignores him, goes back to the table, takes Caleb’s seat. Holds out a hand. “Gimme that.”

“Pay first, sweetheart. Tell yer da to—”

Fjord drops some coin on the tabletop.

The man grins and sets the puzzle ring in the center of the table. “On my mark.” He flips over the little hourglass. “Go.”

Nott swipes the puzzle. Almost immediately, in her ears, _Would you like me to help? Fjord was right, I got quite close—_

 _No_ , she says, pulling the puzzle up to her face and barely moving her lips, in case the man notices and disqualifies her for cheating. _No. Thank you, Caleb, but no. I got it._

A beat, then. _Ja, okay._

She doesn’t bother responding, too busy staring close at the funny ridges on all the different rings, and then beginning the work of fitting them together.

She expects to be furious the entire time, and gnash her teeth behind the mask, and make so many mistakes she’ll have to fight not to throw it at the smug bastard across the table—and, sure enough, she fumbles it several times, tries several incorrect solutions, and the seething rage never quite evaporates—but it recedes a bit, slipping to the backdrop as the funny little rings draw her in.

Further and further, so cleverly crafted, so intricate, so interesting—complicated and teasing and, yes, _shiny_ —but mostly so, so fascinating, how do they _work_? How do they work, how does it work?

The tavern falls away, the noise fades to a dull hum, the man at the table a smear of ruddy pink, Caleb a stretch of warmth off to her side, Fjord gone entirely, everything narrowed down to the twelve interlocking bands in her gnarled fingers and the tick, tick, ticking inside her head (not a clock but a set of tinker’s tools).

How does it _work_?

This band here, that one pulled around here, now this one—no, that one—no, _that_ one, yes, and then this one, or—yes, _this_ one, and another click here, and here, and a gentle clinking and another, and no, no, re-do those last two, and—yes, like _this_ —and now, and then, and now, and….

Her fingers fly, before long, clicking the bands together with something like ease and something like satisfaction and something (everything) like a sunrise trapped in her bones.

And then the last band clicks into place and she stops, fingers buzz-buzz-buzzing, a smile tingling round the corners of her mouth, and she traces the completed ring, the ridges funny against the rough, still-buzzing skin of her fingertips.

Then she holds it up, flat on her bandaged palm, looks the man across the table dead in the eye, and raises her eyebrows in challenge. After a beat, tilts her head at the hourglass, which is nowhere near empty. (She has no idea how long it’s been, but clearly considerably less than whatever the hell the time limit was.)

“Wh—” The man stares, his face twisted in an expression Nott knows all-too-well. (It’s one that says _I don’t trust you_ and _I don’t like you_ and _I'm thinking about smacking you_.)

Jester pops up, out of nowhere, with a wide, wide grin. “We will take that money now!” The man splutters, but Jester sweeps the coins into her bag anyway. “Thank you for the game, it was pretty fun!”

“But—”

“You know, I counted,” Caleb says abruptly. “It took her three minutes and twelve seconds. The time limit, I believe, was five minutes.”

Only that? It felt like much longer…but this is Caleb. Caleb doesn’t miscount. If he says it was three minutes, then it was.

“She did not need them,” Caleb continues, blandly. “So I trust the ring is hers now. As are all of your buttons, of course.”

Nott doesn’t wait for the man’s response, only slips the ring on her middle finger (can’t get it past the second joint, so much wider than the rest of her finger—and it’s sized more for a scrawny halfling man than a knobbly goblin—and there’s the bandages besides) and holds it up for the barest moment before letting her other fingers slowly rise back. Pretends to admire it, wide-eyed and wondering. Then she holds out her hand and blinks.

The man makes a sour face, but, to his credit, does begin ripping all the buttons off of his coat, one-by-one, not setting them in her hands but letting them fall. When the last clatters to the table, Nott looks at the lot, grins as innocent as she knows how (with as few teeth as possible), and hops out of the booth, leaving them behind.

She and Caleb walk away.

Fjord follows after, settles at her side, face shining. “See! I knew y’could do it—you and Caleb, you’re the dream team. And now you’ve got a nice shiny ring for your troubles! Even better than buttons, huh?”

He sounds pleased as punch and twice as sugary and Nott slips the ring off of her finger and tosses it to Caleb. “Here,” she says. “For you.” (It’ll fit him better, and he’s sure to enjoy the challenge every bit as much as she did, anyway, if not more. And maybe it’ll keep his hands busy, the next time things get too crowded, or his mind gets too quick, or too slow, or too red, or too gray.) (She doesn’t know for sure—but maybe, maybe. She can always hope.)

Fjord pauses. He looks confused. Very, very confused. “...Don’t you want it?”

Nott is already walking away by the time he asks, heading back upstairs, but she says, over her shoulder, “No.”

“Why not?”

There are at least five separate reasons, but Fjord won’t listen to any of the truer ones, Nott knows—he never does—so she tosses out the only one he’ll accept, careless and not glaring at all, not even a little. “Doesn’t fit.”

-

_Nott shakes as she tries to find a suitable hold on the dagger. Tricky, with its funny hilt, curved in a way Nott likes the look of in theory but hates in practice, for the way it confounds her stupid fingers._

_She ignores the odd shape and wraps them round it as far as they’ll go, which is, of course, not very far at all. (It is an adult’s blade, and she hardly qualifies. Has several more seasons yet, before she earns that title.)_

_Nott twists the thing around and around in her hands and wishes, quietly, for a learner’s knife. Smaller, easier to grasp. Familiar. (Less likely to kill.) She wishes, she wishes._

_She doesn’t ask._

_-_

_Nott shakes as she tries to put on the brass knuckles. (She is not allowed a dagger, this time. She dropped hers, before, in her panic, and couldn’t find it again, and no one will believe her when she says it wasn’t on purpose.)_

_(She doesn’t know why. A plan like that would be good for avoiding violence, true, and everyone knows she is weak and squeamish—but it would also be clever, and everyone knows she is not clever. She is only a coward.)_

_Her breath catches in her chest. The brass knuckles won’t go on. She shoves and she pulls, but still, but still, her finger-joints are too wide, and they won’t slip past._

_"Convenient,” the raid-leader grunts, when she is stupid enough to say so. "Don’t care. Use ’em anyway.”_

_Nott nods, and retreats, and wedges the stupid things up as high as she can, and pretends it doesn’t hurt and isn’t digging painfully into her skin and she_ doesn’t _know that she’ll be killed if anyone gets close enough for her to try using them._

_-_

_Nott knows, immediately, that her hands are not for grasping Yeza’s. They are the wrong size, the wrong shape for holding. They cannot soothe him, or make any of the fear drop out of his eyes._

_She tries anyway._

_(She doesn’t think it works, much.)_

_-_

_Nott knows, immediately, that alchemical tools are every bit as awkward as weapons, every bit as alien—but they are seven times as interesting, so she tries them anyway. As time drags on, she finds her crooked fingers mold easily to them, and her mind even easier._

_-_

_Nott steals a pair of gloves from a very glamorous gnome lady. They're beautiful, with little gems in the stitching, and sparkly lace, and shining silk. And soft. So, so soft._

_But when she tries them on, they catch on her claws and the delicate, delicate seams go stressed round her joints and begin to tear, revealing deep green through the sparkling white._

_Of course, she thinks. Of course._

_She’s about the same size as the gnome, sure—but the lady’s hands, she remembers, were slender, and ramrod straight, and topped with neatly-rounded fingernails. And she was so rich, the gloves must have been precisely tailored to those perfect, perfect fingers._

_So there is of course no reason they should fit Nott's, more thin and knobbly than slender, more slanted than straight, and topped with jagged, awful claws. (And of course too few in number. A pitiful four to the gnome’s lovely five, leaving the pinky of each glove hanging limp.)_

_(Stupid, to even consider—)_

_-_

_Nott steals a small bejeweled bangle from a large human woman and slips it in her pocket. (It would probably slip just as easy on her wrist, but then again it might not, might get stuck on her hands, catch on all the splayed fingers, or get blocked by her bumpy knuckles—so she keeps it in her pocket and lets it clink, clink, clink against her other treasures.)_

_-_

_Nott steals jewelry and makes herself shiny. She puts precious things in her ears, in her nose, in her hair._

_Sometimes, if they are big-folk-sized, she will slip rings loose on her fingers, for a little while, before she worries too much that they will slip right off._

_(If they are sized for smaller folk, she tucks them in her pockets.)_

_-_

_Nott holds tiny, tiny gems in her hands. They slip down the gaps between her fingers, the places they bend and bend and do not touch no matter how hard she tries._

_She only manages to take a few, in the end._

_-_

_Nott holds Caleb’s hand in hers. They tangle funny, her fingers too short to weave in properly, and her palm too small to match his, and both overall too odd-shaped and rough-skinned to be anything like comfortable or soothing, to brush away any of the dullness from his eyes._

_She tries anyway._

_(She doesn’t think it works at all, but he doesn’t let go.)_

-

Nott sits in the corner and pets Frumpkin. With her hands, this time, not her feet, because she can’t, because she’s cross-legged and the furry little bastard’s taken up residence on her lap. (And because the buzzing has worn off and her joints are starting to twinge, just a bit, and the soft fur is a nice distraction.)

A knock at the door, and Nott's ears go flat. “It’s me,” Fjord says, unnecessarily. (Who else would knock?)

“What do you want.” Her ears go flatter. “Got another challenge for me? Nother prize? Is it another ring? Is it some _fucking_ buttons.”

A pause. “It’s, uh. S’an apology, actually.”

“...Oh,” Nott says. That’s...weird. (Unexpected. Kind of alarming. She’d almost rather the buttons.)

“Can I. I'm comin in, if that’s all right.”

“Hmph.”

Fjord enters, and closes the door behind himself, and stands a little ways away, hovering all weird and funny. “So, uh. Caleb told me y’solved it yourself, back there?”

It’s a funny thing, that sentence. Something softens in her chest—how sweet of Caleb to defend her—and something curdles in her gut. There’s a note of surprise in Fjord’s voice. “Really,” Nott says, flat.

“Yeah. And I, I. Apologize, for assumin otherwise. Mighty rude of me. But, but, uh. Y’know, it’s like I was sayin—you’re really good at that kinda shit! And, and y’were sayin y’couldn’t and didn’t wanna even try, but y’did, and, and look how much you accomplished!”

Nott's right ear twitches. “How much I accomplished.”

“Yeah! You—”

Nott plows over the top of him before he can spew syrup all over the floor like his old saltwater. “I won the group some coin, it’ll last us maybe a week. Caleb has a new fidget thing. My hands hurt. And you’re _still_ being a bastard.”

“...Uh, what?”

“You heard me. _Ooh, silly Nott, I knew you could do it, you’re so talented, you did such a good important grownup job, aww, would you like some_ buttons _?_ Fuck _off_ old man.”

“No, I—yeah, I mean. Sorry?”

It’s the most-confused, least-sincere apology Nott has ever heard, and she grew up with _goblins_. She doesn’t dignify it with a response.

“I just meant.” He furrows his brow. “What’s wrong with your hands?”

...Fuck.

 _Nothing_ , Nott wants to say. _Nothing, they’re fine_. (Because she didn’t mean for that to slip out, because it’s none of his business really, and if he gets it into his head that it’s some kinda big deal it’ll wind up fuel for more Buttonbeard bullshit and then she’ll _absolutely_ have to kill him—)

But she thinks, fleetingly, of fearful eyes and ripped seams—and knobbly joints, and bandages, and _green_ —and her throat closes around the first syllable.

“Y’manage t’cut yourself somehow or somethin? Didn’t think it was sharp.” He squints. “Don’t see any blood.”

She shakes her head. Shakes the words loose. “Nope! I'm fine.” She holds up her hands, flipping them this way and that. “See?”

“But y’said—”

Nott rolls her eyes. “I never said _bleeding_. They’re just sorta…” She wiggles her fingers, frowns at the resulting pale-orange ping (not quite a full pang) beneath her skin. “Twingey, is all.”

“Oh,” he says. “Right. Like, uh. Cramp, or somethin?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad?”

“Nah.” For all her concern, before, watching Caleb, it’s hardly noticeable. (Not that she thinks less of him for finding it painful—it’s possible she will, too, later. And if she doesn’t, well. Maybe she’s just a little more used to fiddly work than he is.) “Just annoying.”

“Kay.” His expression clears. And then clears again. “So _that’s_ why y’didn’t wanna keep the thing. Cause—”

“That’s not why.”

“...It’s not?”

“I just don’t like being talked down to.” A beat, then, “And Caleb can use it more. And it _really_ doesn’t fit, I wasn’t lying. Wouldn't go on all the way.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It’s the joints. Too wide, shape’s all wrong.” Her ears droop for a moment. “Probly for the best.”

“How so?”

“It'd only draw attention. You know, ooh, pretty ring, let’s get a closer look _oh shit it's on a goblin kill it_! And then it’s goodbye Nott the Brave, hello Nott alive.” She grins.

Fjord doesn't. Only shrugs and scratches at the corner of his mouth. “Right.”

“And it'd look silly too. The, the. Juxtaposition. Like putting Beau in a gown and heels, or Caleb without a shirt. Only ugly.”

Still Fjord doesn't laugh. Or smile. Or respond at all, this time.

“Anyway,” Nott says, wringing her hands and looking down at Frumpkin, “um. That's why I didn't keep it.”

Still no response. Then, “Nott?”

She looks up, still wringing away.

“You—” He breaks off. Makes an odd face. Sort of confused, sort of pinched. (Sort of like Caleb in the middle of sorting out a tricky spell, but without the hungry edges.)

“What.”

“...Nothin.” He clears his throat, still with the odd face. “Look, is—I know y’said it’s just annoyin, but d’you, uh...need anythin?”

The shift is so abrupt it sets her teeth on edge and the tone so sincere it threatens to make her break out in hives, but—

“Booze,” Nott says immediately.

“I meant—” Fjord wiggles his fingers awkwardly, motions to her hands, as though she’s too stupid to have put together the dots herself. “For that. I could get you a healing potion, or go grab Jester, if you—?”

“Booze.”

“...Okay.” He clears his throat again. “I'll, uh. Send some up I guess.” A pause. “Outta curiosity though, does that, uh. Actually help? Or are you just thirsty?”

She blinks. “Yes.”

“...Right. Okay. Uh. Good. Good talk, Nott.”

“Mm.”

“And I'm uh. Awful sorry again, about before.” He scratches the back of his neck. “And uh. Just now, I guess. Talkin down to you and all?”

“Mmmm.” Nott's shoulders itch unpleasantly. Her fingers go twitchy in Frumpkin’s fur. “Less talky more boozey.” She makes a shoo-ing motion.

Fjord grins, awkward and almost certainly relieved. “Sure, sure. Going,” he says, and nods, and ducks out, and the door clicks shut behind him.

Nott settles back in the corner, pulls out her flask, and drinks. (That...could’ve gone worse. And is over now, so hey.)

She takes another swig. Presses down on her knuckles. Pets Frumpkin some more. (Ignores the sporadic orange pinging.)

Not long after, Caleb slips through the door, one hand slipping over the newly-disassembled ring, and the other wrapped careful round a small brown bottle.

“For you,” he says, and hands it to her. “Courtesy of Fjord.”

She unstoppers it with a quick Mage Hand and downs half, then notices there’s a little note tied to the neck of the bottle. When she squints at it, it reads, _Thanks for the assist. Much obliged_.

It also looks kind of like there was something afterward that got scratched out. She wonders what the hell it was, then decides she doesn't care so much and goes back to draining the bottle.

(Weeks later, at a different inn, after a rough day and a quick save and a quicker round of drinks, Fjord presses a small brown package in her hands. “Here,” he says. “Found it in the market. Thought y’might like it. Or like to give it t’Caleb if y’don’t.” And he leaves.)

(She stares at it suspiciously for several moments. It doesn’t _seem_ trapped. She tears it apart, hoping it isn’t _fucking buttons_ —or if it is, that they’re at least _nice_.)

(There's a flash of gold and a strip of leather. On further inspection, they resolve themselves into a set of six intricate, interlinked bands and a simple, sturdy necklace cord. And, beneath them, a slip of paper that reads, _Should suit you. And hey, shiny, right?_ )

(She stares at it. Frowns and tucks the lot away in her pockets.)

(Solves the puzzle and tries it on, later. Impossibly, it fits.)

(She takes it off and puts it round the cord and leaves it in her pocket. Wearing it, even as a necklace, feels too weird. The whole thing is too weird. She should just give the lot to Caleb.)

(She doesn’t.)

(Thinks, sometimes, of fidgeting with it in her pocket, tracing its ridges, taking it apart and solving it again idly.)

(And if, some of those sometimes, she goes ahead and does—well. Who's to tell?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)


	6. Clay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi) for the beta!!

Nott shuffles into the drafty room, flask in hand. Booze. Booze, booze, booze. (There’s some in her pack, she knows, a new flavor, plenty stiff.) Maybe some meat, too? (Not rat, nice as it sounds right now. She’s run out. But there’s still scraps of lamb from last night’s supper in one or another of her pockets. Good enough. Though of course she’ll have to save some for—)

“Hey.”

A violent jolt runs through Nott's shoulders. Her flask clatters to the cold stone floor.

She scrambles for it, swearing under breath she doesn’t quite have back yet. (Stupid, stupid.) Grabs hold of the chilled metal. (There’s no reason she should’ve reacted like that. No reason she should feel her fucking heartbeat in her ears.) Pushes herself to her feet. (It’s only fucking—)

Clay sits cross-legged on the bed, staff balanced casual across his knees, smiling. (For a moment she half-expects him to laugh, to say something—not biting, exactly, but confusedly pointed, in his slow, musing way, about her overblown flinch. But the moment passes, and there’s nothing—only the smile, plain and warm.)

“...Hey.” She taps her claws on the flask and ignores the tiny orange lances it sends through her fingers. Pretends she hasn’t only just remembered the roommate situation. (Too few rooms, too few beds, Clay doubling up with her and Caleb—right right right.) Heads, casual, over to her pack, in the opposite corner of the room, and pulls out the tiny bottle without needing to search.

“I was just about to make some tea,” Clay says.

“Mm.” She frowns down at the fresh-sealed cork. She could open it with her teeth in seconds, she knows. Or cast Mage Hand. It would be simpler, easier, smarter. (Would definitely hurt less.)

She opens it the regular way instead.

It takes only seconds. (And there is irony, there, of a bitter sort, that the stupid bottle of booze gives her no trouble but the _very simple lock_ in the dungeon this morning—)

Dull pangs shoot up to her knuckles. She grits her teeth and lifts the bottle for a drink.

“—Nott?”

The flinch is less obvious this time, but she still misses her mouth entirely and spills an appalling amount of liquor on her toes. “Yes? What?”

“I was asking,” Clay says patiently, without batting an eyelid, as though she’s not made a fool of herself for the second (third, fourth) time today, “if you’d care to stay a while.”

She blinks. “...For tea?”

“If you like.”

She hesitates, glancing down at her now-half-empty bottle.

“Or you could just stay. Drink what you have, I drink the tea, and we just….” He waves a hand. “Keep each other company for a bit.”

Nott doesn’t particularly want company. She wants to get good and drunk, and maybe eat something, and hopefully crash before she gets the bright idea to go window-shopping. (Today’s a bad day for it. Tomorrow, maybe.)

But there’s something funny in Clay’s voice. A funny softness in his eyes. And he’s been sitting up here in the room for hours, now, and it doesn’t seem like he’s actually been sleeping off this morning’s excitement, the way she assumed—just...sitting there. Meditating, she supposes. Or just thinking. In the quiet, in the drafty little room, alone.

She thinks, briefly, of his temple. (Not drafty in the slightest, perfectly cozy—alarmingly cozy, after so long on the road—but just as quiet.) She wonders how many hours he spent there, sitting just as cross-legged, with his eyes just as closed, thinking. (How many hours, alone?)

She thinks of all the others downstairs.

She frowns.

“You don’t have to, of course. If you have places to be—”

“No,” Nott says. “I'll stay.”

“Oh.” A slow smile. “That’s nice. I'll just put the kettle on, then.” The bed creaks as he shifts, swings his unreasonably long legs over the side. “Should I make one cup or two?”

“I—” She pauses. Considers the awful bitter taste of tea as plain as Clay likes it. Then the sunny stretch of his smile. Then the bitterness again. Then, hopefully— “Do you have any sugar?”

“I'm afraid I don’t.” He wanders over to his pack, pulls out the little kettle-and-stand. “I did pick up some honey the other day, though, if you’d like yours sweet.”

“...Okay. I'll—I'll take one, then.”

His smile broadens. “That’s just wonderful. Tea’s always a little better when it’s shared, isn’t it?” He sets up the stand, rummages in his pockets, and pulls out a bundle of herbs. “There we are.”

Nott jams the cork back in her bottle, a little regretfully, and puts it away as Clay begins his usual teatime routine. She sits down to watch and wrings her hands in her lap, partly for something to do with them while she waits (sitting still is the absolute worst), and partly because they still ache (less like soreness and more like thin bits of metal stuck just beneath her skin, pressing down and up at the same time, neither hot nor cold but decidedly _there_ ).

No surprise. They’ve been like this all day.

Stiff at first, mostly, in the cold light of dawn. Stiff and a little fuzzy, and faintly orange at the joints. (She remembers wondering what the hell she did to make them angry at her this time.)

Then a little stupid, as they prepared to head out. (A slight twinge as she adjusted her bandages. Another as she checked over her crossbow. Another as she tousled Caleb’s hair from up on his shoulders. Minor though, fleeting. Nothing too unusual.)

And then more, and more, and more, sinking deeper into her bones as they made their way through the dungeon. (Their slow, slow way, as they rammed into obstacle after obstacle, and Nott cast Message after Message and disarmed trap after trap, her motions growing thicker and clumsier all the while.)

And then settling like little stones under her skin, as she tried to disarm another trap, as she failed, as a wall slid shut impossibly close behind them. Sinking further as she found the little locked door.

She wrings her hands harder, remembering.

Examining the little lock. Pulling out her tools, feeling them feather-light and weirdly smooth on her desert-dry skin. Setting to the task with faintly-buzzing knuckles. And working. And working.

And scowling. And ignoring the heat in her joints, the red-orange ache as she fumbled through the motions to cast Mage Hand. (Thinking instead of the heat of everyone else at her back, watching, waiting. Of the too-close wall behind them, the ticking clock, the lingering threat of bodily harm, the tension winding its way tighter and tighter between her shoulderblades as Jester’s jokes got louder and Fjord’s pacing faster and Yasha’s breathing quiet, quiet, quiet.)

And working. (And casting Mage Hand again.)

And working. (And again. And again.)

And—

“Tea’s ready.”

Nott twists her fingers sharp and does not jump. “Okay!”

“Here.” Clay holds out a steaming cup. “Careful, it’s hot.”

From Fjord, the warning would chafe. With Clay, though, it’s just something he says. Just part of sharing tea. She gets that. (Appreciates it, even. It’s nice, familiar, reminds her a lot of _You can reply to this message_.) So she takes the cup with a smile and a nod and wraps both hands around it as far as they will go. (Not very far at all. The cup is Clay-sized.)

It is, indeed, hot. But not in a bad way. It’s almost nice, the way the heat sinks into her skin. She presses her palms flush against the sides of the cup, curls her fingers to match, and lets it leech some of the stupid out of them.

“Let me know if it needs more honey.”

Oh, right. She’s supposed to drink it.

She takes a tiny sip, hoping it doesn’t look as reluctant as she feels, and—huh. It’s sweet. There’s an undercurrent of bitterness still, sure, a weird kind of bite she can’t quite ignore, but mostly it’s sweet. She takes another sip, larger this time. “No, it’s great!”

“Oh good.” There’s a smile. (Maybe a note of relief in it?)

She lays it on a little thicker, just in case. “Tastes _amazing_!” She shuffles around for something more to add. “What, uh—or should I say _who_ ’s in it?”

His eyes light up, and she knows she’s hit the jackpot. “Elsen family. Nice folks. Made clocks by trade, very tight-knit. And a bit of willow bark.” A pause. “It’s a nice blend. One of my favorites.”

“Well.” Nott drinks a little more, and hides a wince at the weird bite, sharper now than before. Worse in the aftertaste. “I can see why, it’s good! I like it.”

His eyes crinkle closed. “I'm glad.”

She adjusts her grip on the cup, pressing her palms to a fresh space and closing her eyes at the renewed heat. “Mm.”

“Let me know if you ever want another cup. I have plenty more where that came from.”

She takes another sip. “Mmm.” (She won’t ask unless she catches him sitting cooped up by himself like this again. Weirdly nice though this particular batch of dead people tea is, it’s still no ale. But of course she can’t _say_ that. Completely contrary to the goal, here.)

“Not to pressure you, of course. I understand you usually prefer your flask, and that’s fair. But, you know, if you’re ever so inclined. This blend can be pretty soothing, too.”

Nott snorts. Tea is as relaxing as booze in the same way that Yasha is as friendly as Jester—which is to say, not at fucking all. (In fairness to both Yasha and Clay, tea _can_ be relaxing and Yasha _can_ be friendly, but—completely different levels.)

He dips his head with a faint smile, continues, “And the willow bark should help with your hands.”

“...With my whatnow?”

“Your hands.”

Nott frowns, slow. “What about them?”

“Oh,” he says. “I've made you uncomfortable. I'm sorry.”

“No,” she says, unsure if it tastes like a lie or not. “Just _confused_.”

“Oh. Well, it’s just you have trouble with them sometimes. Pain, right? Especially in the joints.”

It’s not really a question. (Of course it isn’t. It’s Clay.) So she doesn’t answer, just shrugs and starts tapping the side of her teacup with a claw. (Ignores the sharp twinge that comes with it.)

“It’s okay,” he says, inexplicably. “I get it.”

She chews her tongue and nods. Keeps tapping.

“Old injuries are like that.”

Nott's claw stops abruptly, and the short _clink_ rings sharp into the ensuing silence. (The silence itself rings sharper, after, high and keening in her ears.)

“Take this old thing.” He pats his knee. (She remembers, vaguely, a story about his sister. Some kind of tussle, a wound that still hurts when it rains. Remembers Beau, some time later, crowing _told you so_.) “It’s why I make this blend. The willow bark’s good for pain. So I take it sometimes. Rough days, when it gets a bit much.”

“Mmm.” Nott drinks more, to distract herself from the teakettle whistle in her ears, and skirts uneasily around _what did your sister do_ and asks, instead—because this is still about him sitting up here so alone— “Is this a rough day, then?”

“Well...that's a matter of perspective, isn’t it? For me, no—though I appreciate the concern.” He smiles. “That’s very kind. But for you…. Well, forgive me if this is a bit presumptuous, but I couldn’t help noticing you favored your Mage Hand this morning. So…” He gestures. “Tea.”

“Oh.” The aftertaste sours on her tongue. “Well.” She tries to say _Thanks_ and _I'm fine_ , but what comes out instead is, “Sorry about that, by the way. This morning. With the uh, the trap and all.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Nothing to be sorry for.”

“I messed up.”

“You did,” he says, easy. “But not intentionally. And you got us out, too.”

Nott remembers the bubbles in Jester’s voice, the faraway in Fjord’s eyes, the stone in the set of Yasha’s jaw. She thinks of cages. She thinks of glaives. (She thinks of moments thick as molasses, and fingers twice as slow.) “Not soon enough.”

There’s a pause, as Clay tilts his head a little and looks at her. “No one blames you for needing a little time,” he says at last. “It was a difficult—”

“It _wasn’t_ a difficult lock. Or even a very complicated trap, not really, I just.” Her shoulders draw in. “I messed up.”

“You did the best you—”

“That wasn’t my best.” (Does he really think so lowly of her?) (Of course he does.)

“—could in a difficult _situation_. You were under a lot of pressure, you were worried about the others. You were in pain.” His voice goes soft. “It was a rough day.”

“It wasn’t,” Nott says, because it’s true, because they’ve all had (and worked through) much, much worse. “And even if it had been—so what? Still should’ve done better, it’s my _job_ , the group was counting on me.” She shakes her head, remembering. “And the group comes first. Hells,” she says, “even the _goblins_ knew that.”

-

_Nott is young and watching a handful of elders return from a raid._

_They carry burlap sacks and even from across the way Nott can smell the salt on the dried meats inside. She wipes away drool._

_(Two of them drag a halfling child between them. Nott stares at the dirt and blinks away visions of their tiny, unmoving fingers. As small as her own, but clawless.)_

_They take the lot to the food stores, complaining all the while about the child’s soiled clothes, and how thin the sacks are, and how they could have gotten more goods if they’d had more time._

_One—younger than the rest—complains briefly about the mouthwatering, savory smell in his nose all the way back from Felderwin, taunting him, tormenting him when he’s_ so hungry _._

_Nott cringes a split second before the nearest elder smacks him upside the head._

_“Clan’s hungrier,” the elder snaps. “Shut up and share.”_

-

_Nott can’t write fast enough. She’s trying, she’s really, really trying, but she’s too stiff and the pen’s too clumsy in her grip and the letters are coming out wrong and there’s words missing and—but her mentor’s still talking, dictating rapidfire, so she keeps scribbling._

_When he finally shuts up and wanders off, she finds a new sheet of paper and copies the notes over, slower. (Her mentor will still call them chicken-scratch, but they’ll be readable by someone other than her, and they won’t be missing pieces, and that’s almost enough.)_

_Halfway down the page, she wants nothing more than to take a break, twist her fingers loose again, and she can, now, she can, but. But the notes, this list, these plans—they’re important. Time-sensitive. The whole clan will suffer if the supplies aren’t gathered, if the repairs aren’t done before the cold snap comes._

_So on she goes._

-

_Nott ignores the fire in her fingers and sews another sloppy line of stitches. Finish by tonight, the elder said. I want no more slacking off, the elder said. Do you want the babes to freeze, the elder said._

_Of course she doesn’t. (Some of the elders, maybe—but not the babes. Never the babes.)_

_So on she goes, and on, and on, swapping out hands when she feels like it and snapping threads with her teeth, until all the blankets are double-lined and hemmed and ready._

-

_Nott forces herself to cut straight lines down a big panel of scrap cloth. The shears are too big for her and dull besides and before too long make her hands ache a funny reddish-gray, and all that makes it hard to keep the lines smooth and the strips even._

_She ignores it, and after who-knows-how-long has a huge pile of strips ready for washing and adding to the medical stores. (And a good thing, too. A good thing, their supply of bandages has been so low, and there's another raid coming up, and if they take prisoners—)_

_She shakes out her hands and goes to wash the bandages and doesn't think about how they're not for prisoners. (They'll save lives, is the point. Even if they aren't the right—)_

-

 _Nott's done the job wrong. She’s done it_ _wrong and the whole thing’s going to fall apart and the elders are going to kill her and—_

_She works through the night to fix the mistake. No breaks, no food, no drink. Just work. (Her eyes go dry and her throat goes dryer and her chest constricts and her fingers threaten to seize up, but she doesn't stop.)_

_Come morning, it’s not completely fixed, but it’s better. (It’s better, and it’s almost—)_

-

_Nott's tense. She’s also tired and headachey and her vision’s a bit blurry, kind of? But the tension is the worst bit, as she tries to gain access to this little cellar with impossibly rigid shoulders and arms and hands and fingers._

_She manages anyway, of course, because she’s a pro, and scurries on down, thinking longingly already of shelves full of meats and cheeses and other filling things—and nearly weeps when there are cabinets instead and those cabinets have locks of their own. Briefly, briefly, she considers downing what little booze she has left and hiding in a corner and just crashing here, sleeping away the pounding in her skull—_

_But Caleb is waiting, back in the wood. Caleb is waiting, and very thin, and very, very quiet._

_So she sets to work._

_-_

_Nott's shaking. There’s a wall slid down behind them, a door in front that she has to stand on tiptoe to reach, and a lock that just—won’t—budge. (Not even under the Mage Hand she’s barely managed to cast.)_

_She works at it anyway, conscious all the while of Fjord pacing in the tiny space, of Jester’s voice bouncing terribly bright off the walls, of Yasha standing in the corner still, still, still. And Caleb, to her right, wounded, and Beau with Fjord, brushing shoulders, and Clay near Jester, answering her in soft tones. (And of the seconds ticking by, turning to minutes, turning to an age, as—)_

_The door clicks open. The air softens. The others push through, shoulders unwinding._

_Nott follows, unbreathing, jittery, shoulders pulled tighter than Caleb’s hands on his book the nights he doesn’t sleep, and downs a swig of liquor before casting Mage Hand again. (There is more to do.)_

-

“You don't just—” Nott scowls, fingers pressing hard on the sides of the teacup. “—just let everyone suffer cause you’re a bit uncomfortable.”

“Well—”

“You _don’t_. You stuff it and do the job anyway and you do it _right_.” She presses harder and swallows, tasting salt. “You look out for the group, you keep them _safe_ , that’s the whole—” She shakes her head and sets the cup down, acutely aware of how fragile it is, and how very much Clay cares for it. “That’s the whole point. That’s how it works.”

Clay looks back at her with an unreadable expression and says nothing.

Nott wonders how it is that he doesn’t understand this. He’s always seemed to grasp the concept before, much more readily than any of the others, even—except maybe Jester. (Jester, who grasps it so well Nott almost forgets, sometimes, that she comes from a very small family and not a huge clan.) But now….

Now it’s like he’s forgotten. Needs reminding.

So she looks him dead in the eye, with her very best understanding-but-disapproving look—the one she reserves for very, very rare occasions, when Caleb is a particular brand of emotionally distant—and she says, quiet but firm, “And they _weren’t_ safe, Mister Clay. They were hurting. Because I didn’t do my job.”

Clay nods, slowly, when she finishes speaking. “I understand. You care for them. You feel responsible.” He sets his teacup down, hardly touched. “You wish you’d done more.”

She nods, and lets the look soften on her face. (Hopes she does. It’s hard, sometimes, to get the damn thing to listen. Goblin faces don’t really do _soft_ so well. It’s the teeth, and the noses, and the brows. And the general ugliness.)

“But,” Clay continues, and her stomach sinks a little, because, impossibly, here he is arguing _again_ , “I'll be honest. Part of me wishes you’d done a little less.”

Nott's stomach drops out. (Heat crashes over her, buzzes in the hollows of her face.)

“Oh,” Clay says. “Oh, Nott. I'm terribly sorry—I only meant,” he says, so carefully she’s reminded very vividly of herself talking to Caleb on bad days, “that working so hard came at a cost to you. The more you used your hands, the more they hurt. If you’d done less with them, today might have been easier for you, pain-wise.”

...Oh. (Of course. Of course. This is Clay. Clay, who only minutes ago said she tried her best. Who was so adamant that no one blame themself after the dragon. Who is always so kind. Stupid of her, to forget, to assume—)

She pushes away the sting of guilt, and ignores the lingering buzz, and gives a cheeky grin. “You’re forgetting Mage Hand.”

“No, just remembering the gestures and the duration. Still using your hands a lot.”

“Well—what was I sposed to do, use my teeth? Pretty shitty lockpicks.”

“I would imagine so,” he says gravely, as though she hasn’t handed him a _hilarious_ mental image on a silver platter. “But there are other options. As you said, we're a group. Someone else could’ve handled a lock or two.”

“Not without wasting spells, and we needed those for later. Better for everyone I did it myself.”

“Not better for you.” He tilts his head to the side. “And you’re part of everyone.”

It’s a silly sentence. It’s obvious and it makes her imagine bits of herself stuck on the others (Beau with her teeth, Caleb with her claws, Jester with her eyes) and it makes her want to laugh (high-pitched, distressed, the others shouldn’t look that way), and she almost does—but there’s something small caught under her collarbone.

“You’re part of the group. So when you’re hurt—”

“I wasn’t,” Nott says, and her voice feels too big in her mouth, foreign, too loud in her ears. “I was just—being stupid.”

Clay looks at her with wide, solemn eyes. There’s understanding, there, and a dash of something that looks _almost_ like pity, except that Clay doesn’t do pity, usually—and a hint of something utterly unrecognizable.

He’s quiet for a moment, and then he speaks. “Are the rest of us being stupid when we run out of spells, or ki points, or energy?”

The answer is obviously no, but she grinds her teeth at his tone—slow, infuriatingly reasonable, like he’s _Fjord_ or something—and doesn’t give it.

A longer moment of quiet. (So long she itches to take out her flask.) Then, “Is Caleb, when he goes to that other place?”

The question is plain this time, its tone unassuming, Clay’s face neutral—but the words are like knives (like being smacked on the knuckles with the flat of a blade). She flounders, stuck now on Caleb’s glassy eyes, his ashen fingers in hers, his trembling. (She curls her hands into fists.)

“Or Jester, when she’s loud in small spaces? Fjord, when he lapses with his tusks? Yasha, when she leaves? Beau, when she picks a fight? Me, when I have to cast Calm Emotions on myself?”

Nott sticks her hands behind her back and twists them.

Clay’s eyes flick back and forth across her face. “My point,” he says gently, “is we all have our limits. And they can all be inconvenient, in one way or another.”

Nott finds her hands have squeezed themselves into fists again, crossed behind her back.

“But you never call ours stupid.” He traces a pattern on his knee with a finger. “I wish you’d extend yourself the same courtesy.”

Nott waits, hands squeezed so tight they’ve started pulsing again and gone clammy besides, for Clay to continue.

But he doesn’t, only keeps tracing the pattern.

So she shakes her head. “That’s—it’s, it’s not. They’re—” She thinks of manacles, glaives, and little rooms. Empty temples, cruel kids, awful fathers. Houses turned to ash, minds to smoke—and clumsy, useless fingers. “They’re not the same.”

Clay’s hand stills. “Well,” he says. “Do they need to be?”

“I—” Nott glares at him, just overblown enough to be comical. “Don’t talk in riddles!”

“I apologize,” he says, and there’s a hint of amusement in his voice, both too much and not _enough_. “I just mean...a lot of life is about comparison and conflict, sure—competing needs, that’s just nature. But this?” He shakes his head. “Hurt is hurt. Whatever the kind or story behind it.”

Nott disagrees. (In theory, sure, his philosophy sounds nice—but sometimes-stupid fingers are pretty obviously just _stupid_ next to the aftereffects of _literal torture_.)

“And there’s a story in those hands of yours, Nott.”

She stills.

“And I suspect it’s not a kind one.”

His eyes are as heavy-lidded and soft as ever, but too clear, and too bright, and too deep, and looking at them is suddenly like drowning. (She wonders, fleetingly, as she turns her gaze on her teacup instead, if this is how Caleb feels all the time, looking people in the eye.)

“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, and I won’t pry, just...know that whatever it is, I don’t think it’s irrelevant.”

Nott opens her mouth to object—of course it is, it’s never been less relevant, what’s a bunch of goblin junk got to do with anything—but Clay keeps talking.

“Not to this discussion or in general.” He tilts his head a bit. “Your hurt matters too.”

She closes her mouth.

“Whether it’s that old story, or a rough day—” He wiggles his fingers. “—or anything else.”

Nott stares harder at her teacup.

“And if you don’t like to mention it, that’s fair. But if you’re just hiding it for the group’s sake, like today...know that you don’t have to. Not to protect us.” Clay pauses, clearly searching for the right words. “It’s not a burden. Helping you with it isn’t a sacrifice. It’s a given.”

She traces around the rim with her eyes. One loop. Two. Three.

“You’re one of us, and we always take care of our own.”

Four. Five. Six-seven-eight-nine.

“But it’s a little easier,” Clay says, gently, “if you tell us when you need us to care a little louder.”

Nine. (Her eyes are hot now.)

Nine. (And her vision is blurry.)

Nine. (And—)

A soft, rumbly noise. “Do you need a hug?”

She shakes her head rapidly. No. (Yes.) No. She’s fine. (She is.)

“...Would you _like_ one?”

She hesitates. Shakes her head.

“Ah. Would you like me to go find Mister Caleb?”

The question’s nearly enough to make her eyes spill over, and that fact almost has her saying _yes_ —it would be very nice, not even to bury herself in Caleb’s side, but just for the company, for someone other than herself to focus on—but she shakes her head again, blinking her eyes dry, and says, “Not yet.”

“I'm sure he won’t mind if you’re—”

“That’s not it. We just haven’t finished our tea.”

“Oh.” That slow, sunny smile. “That we haven’t, Miss Nott.”

And so they both pick up their cups again and they drink. (It’s cold, and it’s even more bitter than before, all bitey and weird and honestly pretty gross—but she drinks it all with a smile to rival his.)

When they’re finished, Clay clears the cups, and the kettle, and the stand, and puts them all away, and leaves to get Caleb. Waves politely as he goes.

And when she wiggles her fingers in return, they’re not red, or orange, or stiff, or aching, or anywhere in-the-middle. They’re only green.

(Weeks later, there’s another rough day. It isn’t the first one since their conversation, but it is the first time she tires of the words tumbling over and over inside her head and goes and asks Clay for some of his weird tea.)

(She doesn’t ask the time after that—but he does. And then again. And then she does. It’s never regular, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it, and sometimes neither of them asks at all—but it keeps happening all the same.)

(The sixth time she sits down with Clay for weird, bitey, dead-people tea, she holds the cup in her ugly, crooked hands, and she stares at them as the heat seeps into her skin, melts the dumbass out, and she thinks, stupidly, of the way her middle and pinky fingers won’t touch, except at the knobbly second joints. Of the little gap between them that stays no matter how hard she squeezes them together. Of how small it is.)

(She thinks of a knee that still aches when it rains. A story half-told, carried in cartilage and bone.)

(And she traces the edge of the cup with her eyes—around, and around, and around—and doesn’t look at her reflection in the center.)

(And she says, quietly, she says, _It was the goblins._ )

(And Clay nods.)

(And they talk, a little—but mostly they drink.)

(Weeks later, they have another cup.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws: child death (first paragraph in italics)
> 
> y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)


	7. Caleb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 final very loud THANKE to [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/pseuds/Niqi) for the beta

Nott sits between the water-warped bed and the mildewed wall and licks her sleeve. (Fuzzy, musty, weirdly salt-tinged, but better than the copper souring her tongue. Quieter.)

She licks her sleeve again and wipes her mouth with it, teeth bared. Makes a vague face, anticipating the scrape of old fabric on sandpaper skin that—

Never comes. The fabric slides easy, slick with blood.

She drops her arm to her side, when she’s through, when her teeth are probably clean enough, and her hand smacks down to the floor. (Stings, a little, at the contact.)

She sits. And sits.

The world falls down to the flutter of her pulse in her palms. To the faint buzzing across the backs of her fingers. Both loud, both hot, but half-muted. (There is also, even more distantly, an ache in her jaw, but that’s less like dying embers and more like splintered ice.)

Blood trickles sluggish down her fingers, hangs near her claws. She lets it. It drips, eventually, to the floor. She lets it do that, too.

It's fine. The room—with all its mildew and the bedframe that squeaks at the slightest shift—has clearly seen worse.

She sits a minute longer, thinking of stupid things—bedframes and floodwater and goblins—and then she thinks of her flask, and the bar downstairs, and the others sitting at it, and Caleb in the corner, reading. (Caleb, likely to retire for the night earlier than the rest.)

She stirs.

Sits up straighter, wiggles her fingers experimentally. The skin tugs in a way that turns her stomach and sets her eyes watering a bit and all-around stings like a motherfucker, but—

She swallows and wiggles them again, just to be sure, and—

Yeah. Yeah, okay. They still sting like a motherfucker, sure, but nothing _crunches_. Nothing crunches, so it’s fine. It’s good. It’s cool.

She hops to her feet, blinks away the headrush, and scurries over to her pack. Time to get to work. (And first order of business—)

She pulls a small bottle of mead out of her bag. Winces at the contact, the way it presses against the little puncture on the pad of her thumb. Sets the bottle down on the floor and casts Mage Hand to get it open, because like _hell_ is she going to try it with her fingers this fucked, and then picks it up again once it’s open and takes a big, long swig.

Longer.

Longer.

(There we go.)

She sets the bottle down, near-empty. (It isn’t a very big bottle, not even for a goblin.) Then, appropriately fuzzy round the edges, she reaches into her pack again and pulls out a small bundle of bandages.

She’s been hoping to find a new way to wrap them around her face, cover more skin, or else save them for Caleb, or Jester, or one of the others—but she supposes this will do for now. (It’s not, she reasons, as though anyone else will _need_ them right now, in this town, probably. It’s not as though they’re completely safe, obviously, of course, but this is definitely one of the least dangerous places they’ve been in a long time, so—so that counts for something. So it’s fine if she uses these, just for a while. It’s fine.)

She scurries back over to the cozy spot between the bed and the wall and plops down cross-legged with the bundle in one hand and the bottle re-snatched precarious in the other.

Then she sets the bottle down in her lap and takes the bundle in both stinging, buzzing hands, and begins the familiar process of unrolling it, letting the end fall down long and thin and trail from her lap to the floor and coil there loose. And then she begins winding it round herself, right on top of the old bandages, slowly, slowly, without looking, starting at her wrist and working her way up to the palm and around and—

The door opens.

Nott's shoulders jerk together and she fumbles the bandages and bites back the hiss that rises in the back of her throat because she _knows_ that face in the doorway, the eyes peering at her, the stress-lines around them, knows them like the back of her—

“Caleb,” she squeaks. “Uh, hi!”

“ _Hallo_ ,” Caleb says, looking not in her eyes or even at one of her ears like usual but, instead, directly at her hands.

“Uh,” she says. “I'm, I'm adding another strip.”

“I can see that.”

Nott nods, and shifts the more-obviously-red-hand further back behind the partially-bandaged one, and starts to explain that she’s just trying to hide some more of the green, that she saw one of the patrons in the bar looking at her kind of squinty-eyed and she’s just covering her bases, just in case. (It’s only half-true—one of the patrons did look at her funny, but she’s not covering any bases here other than _keep Caleb from worrying_.) But before she can do more than open her mouth, Caleb speaks again.

“I suppose,” he says, still looking at her hands, “that you had a, ah, run-in with Frumpkin?”

“I,” Nott says, and three things occur to her.

One, Frumpkin is on Caleb’s shoulders, where he has undoubtedly been scarfing for hours. Two, Caleb is not stupid enough to have forgotten this. He is very, very smart, and does not forget anything, ever. Three, Caleb is pretending. He is giving her an out.

It is kind of him, and it is quiet, and it is very, endearingly Caleb, and it warms her—but it also makes her stomach sink, just a little, because this out he is giving her is also very, very Nott. (It is the one she gives him, sometimes, when she finds him with angry pink scratches all up his arms.)

And this, she knows, is not a coincidence. It can’t be, not with the quiet way he is looking at her hands, the stumble in his words, the odd note in his voice. So—

So he knows. He knows, and is waiting calmly for an answer. (At least, she hopes calmly. He is always so worried, always so scared, and she doesn’t want—she _can’t_ add to that.)

“I,” she says again. “Yes,” she blurts, hoping it is the right answer. “Yes, yes I have.”

Caleb frowns, and Nott tries not to shrink—was it the wrong thing after all? Were they not on the same page? Was this—was this a test, or something? Has she failed it? Was she supposed to tell the truth, prove she trusts him, prove that she doesn’t think he’s actually that stupid? Does— _does_ he think she thinks he’s stupid? Does he think she’s been lying this whole time? Does—?

“Frumpkin,” Caleb says, and pulls the cat off of his shoulders and holds him in his arms and frowns deeper at him. “You naughty cat. You got away from me.”

“Brat cat,” Nott agrees, trying not to exhale too obviously or let her ears do anything stupid. (It’s fine. It’s fine. Caleb isn’t mad. She didn’t do the wrong thing. It’s fine.) “Must’ve been while you were reading.”

Caleb makes a noise of agreement and unceremoniously drops Frumpkin to the floor. The cat lands without a sound or even an undignified twist for Nott to snicker at, and blinks slowly up at Caleb.

“You must apologize to Nott,” he says, motioning unnecessarily.

Frumpkin turns dutifully and pads over to Nott and winds his way around her, brushing against her side and her back and coming round the other side to nuzzle her waist.

It’s a little silly, this apology, because all parties know that Caleb is pulling the strings, orchestrating every little motion, constructing Frumpkin’s remorse. It is doubly silly because all parties also know that Frumpkin has nothing to be remorseful for. Nott almost wants to laugh at the theatrics—but she doesn’t, because this is Caleb. (Caleb.) (She won’t laugh at his kindness.)

“Well,” she says instead, fondly. “Thank you Frumpy.” Then, to Caleb, with a bit of a grin, “Don’t be too harsh on him. He’s a brat cat, but still a cat. It’s what they do, or so I hear.”

Caleb hums noncommittally.

“And I did try to attack him that one time. Makes sense if there’s a, a grudge.”

“Two times,” Caleb says, after another hum, but there is no heat in it, or even dry amusement, only a matter-of-fact acknowledgement. “But, but ja, okay, I will not be hard on him, as a, ah, a favor to you. However,” he says, looking up at her left ear and clasping his hands. “Will you do me a favor in return?”

Her grin slips a little at the sudden formality. (Is something wrong?) “Of course, Caleb. Anything.”

“Will you come here?”

Is that all? “Of course!” She hops to her feet again and scampers over to him, trailing bandages behind herself.

She expects him to open up his arms and scoop her up—it’s what he usually wants, when he asks her to come over like this—but instead he crouches down and takes her wrists gingerly and inspects her hands. She watches his eyes flit back and forth, searches for the telltale worry-lines round them, tries to feel for tension in his arms—finds neither, and then before she knows it Caleb is tugging on her sleeve. “Sit down,” he says. “I will take care of this.”

Nott blinks, and doesn’t sit. “I can do it.”

“I know. But Frumpkin is my cat, his actions are my responsibility. So, so I would like to help, if you will allow me.”

“You don’t—”

“I know that I do not have to. But I would like to, if—if you will allow me. I...I want to be sure that this is treated properly.”

“If I wanted it done properly,” Nott says, with a grin and a raised eyebrow and without thinking, “I'd go to Jester.”

“Well,” Caleb says, sitting back on his heels and letting go of her wrists. “If you would, mm, prefer that, I would be happy to go get her for you.”

From anyone else, it would sound like a challenge. But this is Caleb, so it sounds only sincere. (And awkward, and surprised, and the tiniest bit hurt.) (Shit.)

“No,” she says, again without thinking. (But that’s fine, because when she does think about it, a second later, she really doesn’t want him to go get her. Jester is great, and Nott loves her a lot, but she would ask too many questions, and probably worry, and maybe be all weird about Nott’s hands again, so she can’t, so—) She shakes her head. “No.”

Caleb nods, a tiny little thing. “Okay. I will not.” A pause. “Will you let me do this, then?”

“I don’t see the point,” she says, but it’s an acquiescence and, judging by the little spark of relief in Caleb’s eyes, they both know it.

“I do,” he says, and shifts so that he is cross-legged on the floor, and waves her forward. “ _Bitte_ , sit.”

Nott sits.

Caleb scoots forward and taps the underside of her wrists. She raises her hands, lets them hover in midair, and waits for him to pick up the loose end of the bandage and continue wrapping.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes the loose end and begins unwinding it. For a moment she thinks he means to re-do it, thinks he’s noticed an imperfection or maybe just wants to bind her hands the way he does his own—but he just lets it fall to the ground, when he’s through, and then moves on, carefully, to the stickier bandages beneath it, her original set.

She looks at the floor as he peels them away, bites her lip at the stinging and holds her breath to keep from making a sound. (He will only feel bad if she squeaks, and think it is his fault, and it isn’t. It’s Nott's. She was the one stupid enough to bite at her stupid goblin hands with her stupid goblin teeth.)

Caleb frees first her left hand, and then her right, and then ghosts a finger over her knuckles.

Nott suppresses a shiver, but can’t stop herself from glancing down.

It’s an ugly sight.

It always is, of course, on the very rare occasions she deigns to look at her hands unbandaged, what with the green and the visible roughness and the sickening missing finger and the uncanny spindliness of the other four, disturbingly long and deceptively brittle—but the knicks and gouges and jagged lines scattered and criss-crossed all over everywhere certainly don’t help. And neither does the red still seeping from some of them, or the duller, rusty trails down the awful length of her fingers. And neither does the way those fingers bend away from each other, with all their funny curves and bumps and divots and old, lighter-green scars.

And neither does the sight of Caleb’s finger, unbandaged and unbloody and unbendy and unrough and ungreen, hovering over her knobbly, weeping knuckles.

She wiggles her fingers, just to see them move unsettling and too-fluid, like a puppet on strings when she isn’t the puppetmaster, and then she closes her eyes, stuck, as ever, on the impression of hands that should belong to her but don’t (but don’t, but don’t, but don’t). On the feeling of sitting half-in, half-out of her own hide. On the stark, awful contrast between the grubby white of Caleb’s skin against her own dark green.

Caleb makes a quiet noise. “Are you all right, friend? Have I hurt you?”

She shakes her head. “I'm fine, I just. I don’t like to look at them, much.”

“Mm,” Caleb says. Then, “Oh,” as though this is somehow new information. (For a moment she is deeply, deeply confused—surely he already knows this, surely she has said before, surely he has picked up on it, he is so clever—and then she recognizes the tone. This is not Caleb, surprised. This is Caleb, processing. This is Caleb, thinking maybe a little harder about her answer than she wants him to, strictly speaking.)

She rushes to explain and the words trip off her tongue before she can really think about them. “It’s—it’s just I don’t like them. They’re. You know. They don’t feel right? They’re…” She gestures, and it stings, and she ignores it. “They’re wrong.”

-

_Nott picks at her clothes and her nails and anything within reach, when she is nervous. She also wrings her hands when she is scared, and flaps them when she panics. (She is never, ever still.)_

_(The elders are. Still, still, still, until they aren’t, until they strike her, tell her to get hold of herself.)_

_She tries sitting on her hands, clasping them together, shoving them in pockets—no matter what she does, it never lasts. They don’t want to be still. (They have minds of their own.)_

_-_

_Nott shakes and sweats and drops the learner’s knife over and over and over. (The knife is an extension of your hand, the elder says, but Nott's is clammy and numb at the fingertips.)_

_She wraps the handle in her sleeve. (The blade stays put and quivers.)_

_-_

_Nott stares down at funny colors, spotted dark purple-brown and deep green and a sallow sort of yellow that barely, barely shows in the light and not at all in the dark. (On a leaf, they might be pretty. But they are not on a leaf, they are dappled across the back of her left hand, so they are only ugly and embarrassing.)_

_She lets her sleeve fall down over them._

_-_

_Nott tries to move the first two fingers of her right hand. They won’t go. (Won’t listen.)_

_-_

_Nott stares down at the strange fingers. They’re attached to a hand that she_ knows _is attached to her wrist-arm-shoulder-body, but they’re—strange. Alien, unnatural, not_ hers _, these unreal spindly things, with their claws and their divots and their twitching-when-she-tells-them-to._

 _Not hers (and never were). But they_ are _(and always will be). But they aren’t—but_ are _—and aren’t, and_ are _, and, and, and—_

_She scrunches her eyes shut against sudden dizziness, spiraling half-in, half-out of her not-body, and stops thinking and just breathes, and breathes, and breathes, until the panic passes._

_(She doesn’t look at her hands again for nearly two days, after.)_

_-_

_Nott can torture an adult until they pass out. Nott can claw a child to ribbons. Nott can wring a baby’s neck. (The elders can do it faster, and with less hyperventilating. Their hands are so sure.)_

_(Nott's are much less sure, but they can still do it. They can still do it. They know the motions.)_

_-_

_Nott itches-and-twitches so bad she wants to scratch her skin clean off to make it stop (and good riddance), except it wouldn’t work at all, because the itch is inside her head as much as in her fingers and her claws aren’t sharp enough to dig it out. (She’s tried.)_

_She needs—she needs to steal something. Except her hands are shaking too badly to pull it off, so first she needs drink. Yesterday. (She doesn’t have any, though, so she’ll need to steal some to get some, and isn’t that a fuckoff little puzzle.)_

_She manages, somehow, and drinks, and slowly steadies. Nicks a single earring and holds it tight and the itch seeps away. The coiled thing in her chest loosens. (She’s fine.)_

_And then the drink wears off and she finds herself, again, at the mercy of itchy-twitchy fingers._

_-_

_Nott pries at the lid of the jar. It won’t go. (It might, she thinks sharply, in the midst of all her blistering annoyance—it might be a little easier if she had five fingers. She’s pretty sure this stupid thing was made with people with five fingers in mind.) (She’s pretty sure it was made for_ people _.)_

_(She only has four.) (She’s not—)_

_-_

_Nott chews the ends of her claws. Hopes to file them down, a little, dull them into something more like Yeza’s, something that won’t slash so much. (It gives her one less defense and that’s—that’s a little terrifying, honestly—but it also makes her safer to be around, a little less like a goblin, and that’s the more important thing, really, so she does it anyway.)_

_It doesn’t work. She ends up with bloody fingertips and claws with raggedjagged edges and just looks even more feral, really. Like she’s just been ripping someone’s throat out._

_(She can’t win.)_

_-_

_Nott catches a glimpse of her hands as she re-does the bandages and freezes midmotion._

_She wants to look away—always does, when this happens—but can’t, because. Not alien._

_Instead—familiar, in a gut-twisting, skin-buzzing way. (Unwrapped like this, after so long without sun, they are the same pale-green as the torturer’s, and the spot near the pad of her thumb is so much like that raid-leader’s, and the spindliness is like that elder’s, and—)_

_Too familiar, too familiar, look_ away _. (And, oh, there’s the alien bit. There’s the dizzying sense of_ not hers _, of_ someone else’s _. But worse now, worse, because this time she knows exactly—)_

_She wraps them back up in forty seconds flat._

_-_

_Nott's hands are a bunch of things—fidgety, shaky, sweaty, discolored, stubborn, unfamiliar, cruel, itchy, misshapen, savage, nauseatingly familiar—and always, always, they are wrong._

_(She scrapes her teeth across the backs, sinks them into her palms, gnaws on her fingers, and it nearly satisfies the seething goblin-hate—but it never makes them any less wrong. Just bloody.)_

-

“And, and they’re stupid besides, and—and ugly.” _And goblin_ , she nearly adds, but it would be redundant, and isn’t— _shouldn’t_ be true besides, so. So she doesn’t.

“Mm,” Caleb says again. Then, “I do not think they are these things.”

Nott stomps down the urge to snap, because this is Caleb, and he actually _means_ it, bless him. “That’s very kind of you,” she says carefully. “But—” She throws in a laugh, makes it soft instead of sharp, makes the whole thing a bit of a joke. “What d’you think they are, then? Smart? Pretty?”

“I think they are hurt,” he says, “and bleeding, and at risk of infection. And, if you will still allow me, I would like to help with that now.”

“...Of course, Caleb.”

There’s rustling, and it is not until she hears a soft thud on the ground nearby that she registers the sounds as Caleb having removed his pack. There’s more rustling, and a quiet _thud_ and quieter _slosh_ that she _hopes_ is alcohol—

She opens her eyes and yes, it is. It _absolutely_ is. It’s her backup supply. She swipes it the second Caleb opens it.

“That is not for drinking,” he says mildly, but makes no move to take it from her, or to stop her from downing some. “Or, well, _ja_ , I suppose it is. But I would like to use it for disinfecting.”

Nott swallows a little more, then hands the bottle back.

“Thank you.” He takes one of her hands in his. “This is going to sting. I am sorry.”

It does, in fact, sting. Like a _motherfucker_.

“Is this really necessary?” she half-hisses, as he moves onto her other hand.

“Yes. That is, if you do not want to wind up with a real bitch of a fever,” he says, sounding for all the world like Beau. “Or lose a finger.” He pours a little more, and she hisses again, and aches at the _waste_ , all that good liquor falling to the floorboards. “I am sorry, sorry.”

He fumbles in his pack again, comes out with a cloth, wets that with water from his waterskin, and holds it over her hands. “This should hurt less.”

“Mm,” Nott says, meaning _go ahead_ and _thanks_.

Caleb nods, and begins, slow and careful, to dab at the mess she’s made, clear away the blood.

“You asked me,” he says, after a while, “what I think of your hands. I did not really answer.”

“It—it was a joke. You don’t have t—”

“ _Ja_ , but I would like to,” Caleb says, still dabbing steadily. “If you will allow me.”

“I—okay,” Nott says, because she has never been very good at refusing Caleb anything.

He nods, and pauses, visibly turning words over in his head. “...I think they are many things.”

Nott tries not to shrink. (He doesn’t mean it to sound ominous, he doesn’t mean to draw things out, he just needs time to build up to his point. She knows that. She gets that. She does.)

“But mostly,” he says, as he cleans her claws. “Mostly, I think they are hands.”

He means...something by that besides the obvious, she’s sure. But damned if she can tell what.

“I think it is not a matter of...of what they are, so to speak. It is—” His face goes old round the edges, and Nott wants to wrap him in blankets. “—it is about what they do. And your hands, they _do_ many things. They pick up spells like _that_ —” He drops the cloth and snaps his fingers. “—and they make clever potions, and open things, and solve puzzles, and disarm traps that would kill us all in seconds. They pick up little trinkets from people who will not miss them.”

Nott nods.

“They also,” Caleb says, as he pulls a little jar of salve from his pack. “They also slip some of those trinkets in Jester’s pockets, sometimes, to make her smile.”

He unscrews it and scoops a little on his fingers, and then spreads the goop across the back of her hand, stinging and sharp and very, very cold. “They tuck gloves in Beau’s pack,” he continues, “and flowers in Yasha’s, and odd mushrooms in Herr Clay’s, and shells in Fjord’s. They slip incense in my pockets, and ink, and spell components, and books, and potions, and scraps of meat after every meal.”

Nott looks anywhere but at him, breathes through the sting, refuses to be embarrassed.

“And,” Caleb says, spreading salve on her other hand now, much more slowly, “they pick flowers. They braid hair. They hold other hands. They brush away tears, and smears of dirt. They pick up clues. They pet Frumpkin.” He gives her a wry grin, gesturing. “They flip Fjord off.”

She chokes on a laugh.

“They make fantastic shadow-puppets.” He wipes his hands on his trousers, picks up the cleanest of the discarded bandages. Begins to wrap them around, slow, methodical. “They tap out melodies. They move a little like mine, sometimes.”

He flaps one hand, and she pretends her stomach doesn’t do something funny at the sight.

“They wave hello, and goodbye, and twitch when you sleep. They—they do many things. Clever things, yes, and skillful—but also creative ones. Caring ones. Playful. Funny. Unique. I like them.”

“They.” Nott's tongue is very clumsy. “They don’t always. Do all that stuff.”

“No,” Caleb agrees. “But that is all right. They do not need to.”

The sentence sits. A minute passes. Maybe more. (Nott wiggles her toes to keep from squirming.)

“You asked me,” Caleb says again, “what I think of your hands. I think they are clever. I think they are stubborn. And careful, and soft.”

(Soft. Nott's hands have never been called soft before—with good reason. They’re objectively not.)

“They’re rough, actually. Goblin skin is always sort of—”

But he shakes his head, glances up at her. “They are yours.”

He says it like it’s proof, and with an air of finality, and Nott hates to contradict him, so she nods.

“You do not agree,” he says, looking back down. “But that is all right.” He adjusts the last of the bandages. “I will be at your side until you do.”

“That’s—that’s cheating!” Using her own words against her, alluding to, to their promise, like that.

“Well,” he says, with a small smile. “I never said I was going to play fair. Now, _bitte_ , hold still.”

He checks over the bandages. Traces his fingers gentle over hers, searching for blood, for tender spots he has missed, and then just touching, and then just holding, for a moment, and then before she knows it he is pulling them gently forward, and up, and he is bending down and kissing her knuckles, soft, as his thumbs smooth soft paths across the backs of her hands—and then he lowers them again, as though nothing has happened. Smiles soft, as though Nott isn’t short-circuiting.

“Caleb?” she asks, because all the other words are gone out the window, because he has never done this before, ever (and neither has anyone else).

“Mm?” he says, and then he blinks. And looks down, and lets go of her hands, turning bright, sunburn pink the likes of which she hasn’t seen since they were pirates. “I, ah—”

“Little, um. Little forward. You know, I _am_ a lady.” (Stupid to say. Stupid, stupid, because he is already so embarrassed and she is going to make it worse—and because, technically, he already was treating her like a lady. Like a, a much fancier lady than she really is, or ever will be, until—until—)

“ _Shiesse_ ,” he says, turning even pinker. “I know, Nott, I am. I was not intending—I, I care for you a great deal, of course, but that was not—it—”

“Breathe, Caleb,” she says, with a smile, and for once isn’t stung. (It isn’t just the goblin thing, this time. Caleb, she knows, is just kind of like her. He doesn’t like people like that—not anymore, anyway.) “It’s okay,” she says. “I know.”

He nods quickly, still over-pink like raw meat. (Like flowers.) “It is. It is just.” His voice is halting. “It is just something my mother did for me, when I was young. When I fell out of a tree, or scalded myself, or—” An expression she cannot name but knows well, twisting, dull. “Or got a papercut.”

“I bet you got a lot of those,” Nott says, with a hesitant smile. (She can count on one misshapen hand the number of times Caleb has mentioned his parents, since Zadash. Can count on two the number he has mentioned them at all, ever.) (She does not want to get this wrong.)

It is a thin, sad thing, but Caleb returns the smile. “I did,” he says softly. “I did.”

He looks away, and after a long moment she does too, and stares down at her newly-bandaged hands. A little red peeks through, but not very much. There is more green—but not much of that, either. Caleb has hidden most of it, expertly, exposing only her fingertips and her claws, leaving her free to work unencumbered. And the green that is there—

She resists the urge to touch it, find out if it is soft. (She knows that isn’t entirely how Caleb meant it, but maybe the salve has smoothed out her sandpaper skin, just a little?)

Instead she wiggles her fingers, with no small amount of trepidation, and discovers—the salve has numbed the sting. The bandages are snug, and there is pressure, but they are not overly restrictive, and they lie flat, not bunched up. The overlap is a little off—clearly Caleb’s style and not hers—but the ends are still loose for fiddling. (And her fingers are still hers, even as she keeps staring much longer than she usually dares.)

She looks up and finds Caleb clearer-eyed. “Thanks,” she says, wiggling her fingers at him.

“Of course,” he says. “You are my friend.”

“And you’re mine.”

“Just so.”

Frumpkin winds his way into her lap and she pets him reflexively. It soothes the lingering buzz in her fingers.

Caleb watches. “If you have trouble with him again,” he says, quietly, “will you come to me, please?”

“...Sure,” she says, after a beat, looking up. “If _you_ do when you have trouble with him.” And then, because they’ve got too serious, and because maybe, probably she’s crossed a line, she plows on. “I'll—I'll attack him again for you!”

Caleb doesn’t laugh, but he also doesn’t scowl or draw in on himself. Instead, he smiles, and it’s not thin, it’s only fond, and a little awkward, and so very _Caleb_ that she can’t stand it, so she darts forward and kisses him on the forehead and then darts back.

It is Caleb’s turn to blink, now. His hand hovers in midair, like he wants to press it to the spot, or maybe wipe it away (which makes sense, goblin spit is pretty foul), but then it drops. (His brow stays furrowed, though, and Nott can’t have that, so—)

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go back downstairs. You used up the last of my bonus booze—and it, it was very clever of you, and I thank you!—but I need more now.” A pause. “Or do you want to stay here for the night?” (The booze can wait, if Caleb needs quiet. And he might, with that furrow in his brow.)

“ _Nein_ ,” Caleb says, and stands, and stretches a hand down. “Come on.”

Nott grins with every one of her teeth, and takes it, and lets him pull her to her feet.

She doesn’t let go, when she’s up, and neither does he, so they are holding hands as they leave the room, as they go down the stairs, as they make for the bar.

(They are not holding hands, weeks later, when Nott grows frustrated with her stupid, stubborn fingers and tears at them again.)

(But they are, two days after that, when Caleb’s eyes are as distant as her fingers are crooked, and she holds fast, thinking of things that hands do—of setting old wooden carts aflame and shoving halfling-scraps in mouths and torturing innocent folk, of turning coins to silver and unbuckling books from shelves and sealing promises, of sharing cats with snaps and tucking meat in pockets and holding fast.)

(She holds fast, and she traces careful circles on the back of his hand with her thumb, and her fingers are still crooked as his eyes are distant, still stupid, still green—but they are also warm, tangled up in Caleb’s, and sure, and soft as she can make them.)

(She holds fast, and Caleb slowly comes back to himself, and they are, she thinks, just for a moment—just for a moment, just for a moment—soft _enough_.)

(Soft _enough_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws: self-harm (chapter centers round the aftermath thereof, contains description of injuries), dissociation (instances & references to throughout), child death (sixth paragraph in italics)
> 
> thanks for reading & as always y'all can find me on tumblr at [arodrwho](http://arodrwho.tumblr.com/)!!


End file.
